Chicago, IL- Parents and teachers already prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the state of California is doubling down, asking the Ninth Circuit to do what no court in America is allowed to do: overrule the Supreme Court. This week, Thomas More Society filed an Answering Brief in Mirabelli v. Bonta, calling on the Ninth Circuit to reject California’s invitation that it flout the Supreme Court and instead affirm the district court’s permanent injunction protecting parents and teachers from California's school gender secrecy policies.

The Supreme Court's per curiam opinion in Mirabelli v. Bonta vacated the Ninth Circuit's stay of the injunction and held flatly that California's policy of facilitating a child's gender transition at school without parental consent violates the rights of both religious and nonreligious parents. That should have ended it.

Instead, California is recycling the exact arguments the Justices already rejected: that parents have no right to know about their own child's gender confusion unless they happen to ask, that schools can withhold that information under a vague, undefined "would engage in abuse" loophole, and that parents have no right to say “no” to a gender transition.

"California should have read the Supreme Court's opinion and dropped this appeal. Instead, the State is asking the Ninth Circuit to do the one thing no lower court can do: overrule the United States Supreme Court," said Paul M. Jonna, Special Counsel for the Thomas More Society and partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP. "That will backfire. It will produce more rulings against California and a larger fee award at taxpayer expense. The Supreme Court is the end of the line, and every lower court is bound by what it said."

In the brief, TMS attorneys argue vertical stare decisis leaves the Ninth Circuit no discretion to relitigate what the Supreme Court has already decided. And the ratio decidendi, the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s vacatur order, independently wins the case for the teacher-plaintiffs, who cannot be forced to comply with an illegal order.

The case was brought by a class of parents and courageous public-school teachers challenging California policies that direct schools to hide a student's social gender transition from parents unless the child agrees to tell them. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California sided with the families and teachers in December 2025, entering a class-wide permanent injunction on Free Exercise, Substantive Due Process, and Free Speech grounds. The Supreme Court backed that injunction up in March, but only as to parents. Thomas More Society is now asking the Ninth Circuit to affirm the injunction in full, for parents and teachers alike.

"This case has always been about a simple, bedrock principle: parents, not the state, have the right to decide what happens to their own children at school," said Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society. "California has spent years in federal court defending a policy that keeps parents in the dark and compels conscientiously objecting teachers to help do it. The Supreme Court has already weighed in. It's time for California politicians to follow that ruling and respect parental rights."

Read the Plaintiffs-Appellees’ Answering Brief in Mirabelli v. Bonta in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, here.

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