SCOTUS Sides With California Parents In School Transgender Dispute
The Supreme Court on Monday evening granted a request from a group of parents in California to reinstate a ruling by a federal district court prohibiting schools in the state from “misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation.” In addition, the ruling requires schools to follow parents’ instructions regarding the names and pronouns that children use there.
In a detailed seven-page ruling, the majority clarified that the parents were likely to succeed in their argument that California’s policies infringe upon their right to freely practice their religion and their right to guide the upbringing and education of their children.
Two of the court’s left-wing justices, Elena Kagan, joined by Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the court’s ruling, arguing that Monday’s ruling “shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction.”
The dispute originated in 2023, when two teachers filed a lawsuit against the school district seeking an exemption from its policies on gender and pronouns. They were later joined by parents of children who either socially transitioned at school or believed their children had done so.
After the district court ruled in favor of the challengers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit temporarily suspended that ruling while the state appealed the decision. The challengers then escalated the case to the Supreme Court, asking the justices for intervention.
In a nuanced decision on Monday night, the majority ruled in favor of the parents but rejected the teachers’ request. The majority explained that the parents were likely to succeed in their claim that the state’s policies interfere with their religious freedom.
The majority wrote that the policies are subject to the most stringent constitutional test, which is known as strict scrutiny, because “they substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’”
The policies can’t pass that test, the majority noted further, regardless of the state’s claim that the “policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy” because they “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
Moreover, the majority wrote, parents have long had “primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,” including “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
In a seven-page dissenting opinion, Kagan criticized the court’s decision to resolve the case using the interim docket. She claimed that the high court “receive[d] scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute” and then, without having any oral argument, “grant[ed] relief by means of a terse, tonally dismissive ruling designed to conclusively resolve the dispute.”
Kagan further wrote that the court could resolve the issue at the center of this case in “the regular way, on our merits docket.” She pointed out that the court has been revisiting a petition for review in a similar case repeatedly since November.
“Why not, then, just grant” review in that case, she asked, “and decide it this coming fall?”
“Our processes are, in short, the hallmark of judicial probity, and alike its guarantor. There was no reason to abandon them here,” she concluded.
In a four-page concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, addressed and countered Justice Kagan’s criticism.
Barrett argued the majority’s ruling that “the parents are likely to succeed on the merits” is a “preliminary” one. She then said that the interim relief decision “is not a sign of the Court’s ‘impatience’ to reach the merits,” but rather “reflects the Court’s judgment about the risk of irreparable harm to the parents.”
If the 9th Circuit’s order is not lifted, she added, “parents will be excluded—perhaps for years—from participating in consequential decisions about their child’s mental health and wellbeing.”
Obama Accuses JD Vance Of Promoting ‘Blood And Soil’ Politics
Former President Barack Obama rarely mentions Vice President JD Vance by name, but that changed this week with one of his sharpest public attacks since Vance took office.
The comments immediately fueled speculation that Democrats are beginning to focus more attention on the vice president as Republicans look ahead to the post-Trump era.
Speaking Thursday during a conversation with author Malcolm Gladwell, Obama accused Vance of promoting what he described as a “blood and soil” vision of America, despite being married to Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Obama made the remarks while discussing the Reconstruction era and arguing that many of the same debates over citizenship, voting rights and national identity continue today.
“We have a politics now that at least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘We the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama said.
“When you have the vice president, current vice president, making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘We the people,’ that it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here despite him being married to a daughter of an immigrant himself.”
The phrase “blood and soil” is historically associated with Nazi Germany and white nationalist ideology.
Obama went on to argue that debates over who belongs in America remain central to the nation’s politics.
“That echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions,” he said.
Gladwell followed by accusing Vance of hypocrisy, arguing that the vice president was making what he called a nativist argument despite his own family’s immigrant background.
Obama agreed.
“That is progress,” Obama said.
“Listen, hypocrisy is progress. It is, because it means that you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Vance’s office for comment.
Obama did not identify the specific speech he was criticizing, but Vance’s most recent nationally televised remarks came during Independence Day celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday.
In that speech, Vance encouraged Americans to reject what he called a “two-dimensional view” of the country focused only on its historical failures.
“So what I’d ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday, is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country,” Vance said.
“Reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins, but not its grace and its greatness.”
He also emphasized that America’s accomplishments were achieved by “a common people working towards a common future.”
Obama has generally avoided making Vance a regular target since the vice president took office.
One notable exception came during the 2024 presidential campaign when then-Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Without naming Vance directly, Obama contrasted Harris’ choice with the Republican ticket.
“When a presidential candidate chooses a running mate, it says a lot about who they are and what kind of president they’ll be,” Obama said at the time, Fox News reported.
Political observers have increasingly discussed Vance as a potential frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, though he has not announced any plans to run.
Against that backdrop, Obama’s unusually direct criticism is likely to fuel speculation that some Democrats are beginning to sharpen their message against a politician they view as a likely future standard-bearer for the Republican Party. While no Democratic leaders have publicly described their strategy in those terms, prominent figures often begin drawing contrasts with potential future rivals well before a presidential campaign officially begins.
Whether that proves to be the case remains to be seen, but Obama’s remarks marked one of his most pointed critiques of Vance to date and ensured the vice president once again found himself at the center of the national political conversation.
