Washington, DC - Three states, dozens of parental rights and religious liberty organizations, along with advocates and former federal officials, filed friend-of-the-court briefs asking the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate a Ninth Circuit stay and restore protections for California families in Mirabelli v. Bonta. Thomas More Society serves as lead counsel for teachers and parents challenging California’s policy requiring schools to facilitate children’s gender transitions in secret and actively deceive parents who ask questions. The emergency application is now pending on the Court’s “shadow docket.”

In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez granted a class-wide permanent injunction against the state’s Parental Exclusion Policies, finding they violated both the Free Exercise rights of religious parents and teachers and the fundamental right of all parents to direct their children’s upbringing. Following an emergency appeal by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction, prompting this emergency application to the Supreme Court.

Highlights from the friend-of-the-court briefs:

• Three states—Florida, Montana, and West Virginia—represented by their attorneys general, emphasize that parental rights are among “the oldest fundamental liberty interests” recognized by the Court. The states’ brief emphasizes that lower courts urgently need Supreme Court guidance as more than 1,200 school districts nationwide have adopted similar secrecy policies, affecting over 12 million students—nearly a quarter of all public schoolchildren in America.
• A coalition of more than 75 parental rights groups, state legislators, and religious liberty advocates—led by Advancing American Freedom and including former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, Moms for Liberty, Concerned Women for America, state family policy groups from 14 states, and Students for Life of America—documents similar cases pending across ten federal circuits and traces parental rights through Western tradition, the Founding era, and Reconstruction.
• Prominent legal group, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which successfully argued last term’s Mahmoud v. Taylor, challenges the Ninth Circuit’s attempt to limit that decision to classroom curriculum, arguing the Court’s Free Exercise precedents provide a “straightforward path” here as well: “if secretly instructing children from ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks interferes with the rights of parents, then surely facilitating a child’s secret transition to another gender does too.”
• Parental rights advocacy organizations, including Child & Parental Rights Campaign, Our Duty USA, California Policy Center, and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, present testimony from California families whose children were secretly transitioned and explain that social transition is a significant decision medical organizations recommend involve parents—citing cases where children attempted self-harm while schools kept parents in the dark.  ‍
• ‍Two public interest law firms, the National Legal Foundation and Pacific Justice Institute, argue that Mahmoud cannot be limited to curricular matters, noting that naming children has always been a parental responsibility schools may not unilaterally override at a child’s request. ‍
• Free speech and constitutional advocacy groups, including NC Values Institute, America’s Future, and Citizens United, highlight that the policy compels teachers to engage in government-mandated deception—a combination of compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination the First Amendment forbids.

“This remarkable coalition—spanning three state attorneys general, former federal officials, religious liberty advocates, and grassroots parental rights organizations from across the country—reflects a simple truth that Americans overwhelmingly agree on: parents have a fundamental right to know what is happening with their own children,” said Peter Breen, Executive Vice President & Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society.

“California’s policy illegally excludes parents from important decisions regarding their own children. And compounding that travesty, the state requires teachers to systematically deceive parents. That is incompatible with the Constitution, time-honored principles of parental authority, and basic decency,” added Paul Jonna, Special Counsel for Thomas More Society and Partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP. “We hope the Supreme Court will restore Judge Benitez’s injunction and protect California families.”