Parents and teachers challenging California’s student gender secrecy policy have filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit placed their district court victory on hold. “When the lower courts get the law so egregiously wrong, this Court has not hesitated to intervene,” argued the Thomas More Society, which represents the challengers.

In a case that has dragged on since 2023, Christian parents and teachers challenged a state policy, implemented by many districts, that prevented school officials from informing parents about a student’s gender transition without the student’s express permission. The policy required school officials to conceal not only the fact of the child’s transition, but even the name and pronouns the child used at school. It even required them to deliberately lie to parents who inquired directly.

On December 22, 2025, Judge Roger Benitez ruled that “Parents have a right to receive gender information, and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.” He blocked state officials from enforcing the policy, effective immediately, and denied a motion to stay his ruling pending an appeal.

On December 26, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a short-term administrative stay. The order was “only intended to preserve the status quo until the substantive motion for a stay pending appeal can be considered on the merits,” and did “not constitute in any way a decision as to the merits of the motion.”

On January 5, 2026, the two Obama appointees and one Biden appointee on the panel lengthened their order to a stay pending appeal, which blocks the district court’s verdict while the case proceeds. The panel professed to be “skeptical of the district court’s decision on the merits,” suggesting that its recognition of longstanding parental rights would “expand the concept of substantive due process.”

The circuit court also expressed “serious concerns with the district court’s class certification” — the case became a class-action lawsuit — and claimed that “the district court failed to clearly identify the set of policies” that unconstitutionally infringed on parental rights. The district judge had written that he did not “hold any law to be Unconstitutional” because there never was any law requiring schools to keep parents in the dark; the Department of Education simply mandated it, and the exact language of their policy changed multiple times over the lifetime of the lawsuit. “What this Court’s order does is to clear up confusion caused by the State Defendants,” the judge wrote.

Notably, the circuit court rejected the district court’s reliance on Mahmoud v. Taylor, a 2025 Supreme Court decision allowing religious parents in Montgomery County, Md., to opt their children out of controversial sex-ed curriculum. The circuit court described Mahmoud as a “narrow decision focused on uniquely coercive ‘curricular requirements.’” 

The Thomas More Society challenged this interpretation directly in their January appeal. “The Ninth Circuit’s order flouted Mahmoud, instead applying an unpublished, divided, Sixth Circuit decision that badly misread both Mahmoud and Yoder,” the appeal argued, referring to a 1972 Supreme Court decision. “The panel concluded that Mahmoud does not require schools to allow parents to opt out of ‘general operational policies that involve no instruction,’ no matter their effect on the parents’ right to control the religious upbringing of their children.

Because of this erroneous interpretation, they urged the court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision. “There is a reasonable probability that four justices would grant certiorari and a fair prospect that five would reverse because this Court’s decisions in Mahmoud and Fulton are clear and unambiguous. … In light of how poorly the Sixth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit misunderstood Mahmoud, this Court should vacate the Ninth Circuit’s stay order before the error spreads.”

The appeal also urged the court to take the case “because, as the Court is aware, several challenges to various Parental Exclusion Policies are pending in the lower courts and this Court. Three such challenges have already been presented to this Court, but had jurisdictional and immunity defects that are not present in this case.”

Directly, the Thomas More Society asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s stay on an emergency basis, allowing the district court’s order in favor of teachers and parents to enter into force while the appeal proceeded. However, they left the door open to the Supreme Court choosing to decide the issue directly, “given the importance and urgency of the issues.”

In his December order, District Court Judge Roger Benitez had written that “parental exclusion policies create a trifecta of harm,” harming children who need parental guidance, harming parents by violating their parental rights and right to free exercise, and harming teachers by forcing them to lie in violation of their religious beliefs.