The Supreme Court on Monday issued an important order on its shadow docket in Mirabelli v. Bonta. The court granted an emergency appeal filed on behalf of Catholic parents by the Thomas More Society, blocking a state law that barred parental notification that their children had changed their gender identity.
I previously wrote about the case after heralding the decision of District Court Judge Roger Benitez, who wrote a powerful opinion in support of the rights of all parents. He wrote:
“The Attorney General on behalf of the State of California says Plaintiffs’ lawsuit is “properly understood as seeking a federal constitutional exemption from the California constitutional right to privacy, as applied to gender identity in the school context.” State Defs’ Oppo to Plaintiffs’ MSJ, Dkt 256, at 9. But the Attorney General gets it upside down. Plaintiffs do not ask the State to magnanimously permit a sort of federal constitutional exemption. What Plaintiffs seek is to force the State to respect their enduring federal constitutional rights as citizens of the United States.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed his injunction.
For years, some of us have been raising the attacks on parental rights. That is why this order is so notable.
I recently wrote about this fight in Michigan, where parents secured the right to sue to defend their rights against the Rockford Public School District. The District refused to inform them of gender identity changes in their children.
While it only restores the injunction during the pendency of the litigation below, it reflects a clear notion of the likelihood to prevail on the merits.
There remains ambiguity on where individual justices fall on the issues. The parents raised both free exercise and substantive due process challenges. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wanted to go further in ruling on the merits in favor of the parents.
In her opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett rules for the parents, not the teachers, in the case. In her concurrence with the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh, she focuses most on explaining why a view in favor of substantive due process is consistent with the decision in Dobbs.
The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. Justice Kagan decried the rejection of California’s priorities and objected to “throwing over its policies in a slapdash way.”
Justice Sotomayor was the only member of the Court who opposed all of the parents’ and teachers’ claims. Without writing a dissenting opinion, she would have denied their application in its entirety.
The decision puts even greater focus on another case.
Last year, I wrote about a startling decision in Foote v. Feliciano in which the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled against parents in a similar challenge. Massachusetts parents Marissa Silvestri and Stephen Foote demanded notice of any gender identity change of their child after learning that the 11-year-old child had self-declared as “genderqueer.”
The First Circuit dismissed the challenge, holding “as per our understanding of Supreme Court precedent, our pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children.”
The petition for review to the Supreme Court is now pending. Foote could allow the Court to reaffirm the fundamental rights of parents and, most importantly, clearly establish the standard for review in future cases.
The Court previously stated in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
It is time for the Court to back up that constitutional right with clear and robust protections.
Here is the opinion: Mirabelli v. Bonta
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the New York Times bestselling “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Parents rule. These sub mankind two legged tax salaried cratures are as vile as the Clintons. All belong jailed, hung for crimes against mankind and treason.
The First Circuit’s contention that schools, rather than parents, are “charged with the responsibility of educating children,” is pure totalitarian nonsense. Schools are places of learning, nothing more. They contribute to children’s education X number of hours a day, just as they contribute to their feeding, sheltering, and enculturation. By its flawed reasoning the First Circuit must also believe schools can feed kids whatever they want, force them to sit out in the snow, and teach them to steal.
Rulings like this are clear evidence the parents of these First Circuit judges failed in their responsibility to do what schools no longer do: make sure their children can think critically.
I find it inconsistent on Prof. Turley’s part that he supports parental rights in this case, but is completely mum in areas where parental rights collide with adult free speech. Specifically, in his book The Indispensable Right, he refuses to claim for parents the right to control the information content their children are exposed to. That cedes to malign content producers access to impressionable children, behind the parents’ back (porn, private chat rooms, negative self-image, Islamist infowarfare ops, CCP propaganda) .
My guess is that Turley is reluctant to mention ANY well-reasoned exceptions to free speech, afraid that he’ll be accused of being weak. But, oversimplifying the problem by taking up a dichotomization stance (“You’re either for free speech or for censorship”) inadvertently cedes power to malign actors intent on undermining our kids’ moral development to suit their own perverse financial and political agendas.
A better strategy is to begin with defining the responsibilities that go with ability to speak in the public square….things like loyalty to our nation and its security, authenticity, and respect for law and custom. This means spreading the power broadly throughout American society to uphold standards of public decency and honor, and particularly keeping parents in power over the moral upbringing of their children, even if it means crimping adult free speech rights that work against it. It means reserving the legal power to uphold public standards thru civil action.
Your flowery words don’t hide the fact you are a total statist, focused on a communist take over of all inalienable rights by the government and you support the sick culture of children’s genital multilation. You can never stick to the subject but always introduce another issue to conflate and confuse. But you can’t hide the truth, that you are nothing more than an Internet troll.
You totally misunderstand my position. Civil action is NOT statist. It puts power in the hands of ordinary people to police irresponsible use of pubic information spaces., not government. Stop oppo-branding things you don’t understand. Your verbal tactics remind me of how progressives react when they lack any logical argument
No, this is consistent. The daughter goes to school, where she says, “I am a boy.” The state requires the school to censor that message. Turley opposes this.
PornHub sends a message:”This is what ppl do with their genitalia.” The state requires no one to censor this message, so there is nothing l for Turlley to oppose.
Interesting take on censorship and secrets. 🤔
“I find it inconsistent on Prof. Turley’s part that he supports parental rights in this case…” And that is an issue of contention for you? Goy kids? Let’s hope not.
Apparently they aren’t all insane.
The usual idiots dissented.
How about we expose the primary culprit in this issue. THE PARENTS. If the parents take on their responsibility of being a parent, they would be aware of all the things the school is doing. In today’s world it is financially hard to take time off work to attend class or participate in school activities. Perhaps help you can arrange a long lunch/ late start to work and help out in an art project, library work, reading to the children in class or similar. These kinds of activities not only help the children, school but yourself. The loss of $ is nothing compared to the rewards of knowing and helping not only your children but others.
I was fortunate that while my dad commuted 2 hours a day, my mom worked part time and came to class and helped out. She also was the head of the cub scout troop. In the summer my dad helped out with 50 mile hikes out of upper Yosemite. My wife provided home school for our youngest daughter and developed a strong bond. Now one day a week she goes into the local elementary school and helps out the librarian. These activities enable you to understand what your child is exposed to so you can support or counsel. Going to WATCH a soccer match is supportive but not participation.
I understand that once the child reaches 18 there is not much that can be done but up until then you have a lot of influence.
I would not have wanted my parents to be present at school during school hours. It’s embarrassing, and undercuts a student’s sense of independence.
So, in this scenario, a class of 24 would have seating for 72? So that both parents could observe what was going on?
Why not just make streaming feeds available, so I could watch on my phone the same way I can watch from my video doorbell.
All the parents could text what they liked and didn’t like, for the teacher’s benefit, as the day went on
😂 interesting idea but parents might object to children’s identities on video. Teachers would probably like that because it’s proof nothing untoward occurred if accused.
It is a testament to the critical legal theorists that the three liberal justices can hear a case, grasp the legal arguments and then without batting an eye rule against the plain reading and understanding of the Constitution. They will make any argument then need in order to come to an ends based ruling that supports what they wanted to support prior to even hearing the case.
Please play the music to Three Blind Mice now.
That’s what Turley wrote.
Queue the insults….
Hullbobby, the problem is not the case itself. It’s the abuse of the “shadow docket” to bypass the full appellate process. The three dissenting justices did not argue on the merits of the case. They objected to the “skipping the line” method to review this case. Turley did not mention this because it gives him an excuse to trumpet a “victory” of sorts when the reality is the previous court ruling supporting parents could still be overturned.
This ruling is just a preliminary assessment of the merits. Not a ruling in favor of parents.
They still have to hear arguments from both sides before any definitive ruling is issued.
The three dissenting justices did not rule against the plain reading of the law at all. They pointed out the majority chose to take the case without letting lower courts hash out arguments before reaching the Supreme Court. The majority ignored the actual text and the state-level purpose of the law.
A plain reading shows it is a safety measure designed to protect vulnerable students from being “outed” into potentially abusive home environments.
Kagan was pointing out the majority’s procedural overreach. Not whether the parents rights were violated.
Don’t we have laws covering abusive parents already? This law assumes NO parents can be trusted with the info. That’s a bizarre and repugnant overreach of state power.
Pbinca, no the law does not assume such a thing. The law prevents schools from basically being snitches on students who do not want parents to find out about their choice to identify as a particular gender. It should be a student’s choice to tell their parents. Not the schools or state officials.
Parents want schools to essentially be parents in absence of THEIR presence. They are not parents. They are there only to teach.
Your position is that it’s OK for students to lead a double life, and schools must be complicit in the deception.
And any attempt to stop this driving of a wedge between parent and child must be halted until it has gone through full appellate review, because just as puberty can be put on pause, so can a child’s aging process.
Students possess a fundamental right to privacy that schools are professionally and ethically bound to respect. A school’s primary mandate is to provide a safe learning environment, not to act as an investigative arm of the household. By maintaining student confidentiality, schools are not ‘deceiving’ parents; they are adhering to privacy standards that allow students to navigate their identity at their own pace.
Furthermore, a critical distinction exists between identity and endangerment. While schools must intervene in cases of criminal activity, abuse, or substance use—where there is an immediate threat to physical safety—gender identity is not a pathology or a crime. Conflating identity with ‘harm’ allows for the imposition of specific moral values over established privacy rights. This complexity is exactly why such cases require rigorous fact-finding in lower courts, as noted by the Supreme Court dissenters, to avoid broad rulings that ignore the nuanced safety risks of ‘outing’ vulnerable youth.”
Schools look after kids, they are not extensions of the parent’s authority to monitor every thought or social interaction.
Furthermore, state Mandatory Reporter laws. These laws specify that teachers must report abuse or self-harm, but they do not list “gender identity” as a reportable harm. Therefore, “outing” a student goes beyond their legal mandate.
DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) listed the pathological Dx of “gender identity disosrder.” It was changed to “gender dysphoria” in a later edition. Also the World Health Organization (WHO) recently removed “gender incongruence” from its classification of mental disorders in the International Classification of Diseases-11 (ICD-11).
BOTH changes were intended, not on diagnostic factors, but rather to assuage and mitigate the “distress caused by external and internal conflicts rather than labeling transgender identities as inherently disordered.”
https://esgbykooky.substack.com/p/the-diagnosis-of-gender-dysphoria
poor georgie. could easily be diagnosed with Confirmation Bias/Dunning-Kruger syndrome (you all remember–the one that Georgie tried to educatel us, with fake authority, was the “Kruger-Dunning” effect.)
Anonymous, huh? Did you even understand what you posted?
The diagnosis of “Gender Dysphoria” focuses only on the clinically significant distress or impairment an individual feels because their gender identity doesn’t match their assigned sex. It is not the same as identifying as a different gender. Those who identify as another gender are not considered mentally ill by any medical authority.
A student identifying as a different gender than their biological sex does not experience gender dysphoria unless they are outed by someone and end up being bulled, shamed, denigrated, and treated as freaks with the result being distressed about that situation.
So a student identifying as a different gender is not automatically considered to be experiencing gender dysphoria. Big distinction.
George/X: stepping in here, if I may. Perhaps you need to read up on what constitutes gender dysphoria.
Your statement, “A student does not experience gender dysphoria unless they are outed by someone and end up being bulled, shamed, denigrated, and treated as freaks with the result being distressed about that situation,” is patently incorrect.
It looks like you may have been referring to gender expression,* not gender identity.
Here, I’ll leave you with two authoritative sources.
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients/gender-dysphoria-diagnosis
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20475262
*notice the word “includes” or “involves” as one of several factors in DIAGNOSING gender dysphoria.
thanks for opening up your “comprehension” skills to other, more learned, descriptions, as cited.
yours truly, lin.
It always amazes me that these people know that the United States has the most heavily armed civilian population and yet they insist upon the most provocative interference in pre-political relationships.
Your off in the weeds.
If your child is bullying others – the school should be informing the parents.
If your child is being bullied – the school should inform the parents.
If your child is behaving perfectly normally – the school should inform the parents.
Schools are not parents. They do not get to second guess parents – but parents DO get to overrule schools.
If by no other means than by changing schools.
It is irrelevent whether you label a childs mismatched perceptions about gender dysphoria or not,
Parents still need to know.
I was cutting a class in my senior year of high school and the vice principal called me into the office and threatened to call my mother. The threat to tell my parents was the only discipline imposed and it stopped my behavior.
This is lunatic stuff and I hope that the ’28 Democrats go all in on this “we can have secret sex talks with your minor children” nonsense.
The students don’t have a “fundamental right to privacy” as against their parents and legal guardians. It’s even more ludicrous in the case of this statute – the minor children are “out” to strangers and other third parties IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
This is all warmed-over grooming advocacy, this time in the guise of “gender identity.”
“Students possess a fundamental right to privacy”
Not from their parents PERIOD.
“that schools are professionally and ethically bound to respect.”
Nope, a school substituting its judgement for that of a parent is unethical and immoral.
“A school’s primary mandate is to”
Serve parents. PERIOD.
“provide a safe learning environment”
Nope and if that were the case they suck at it.
“not to act as an investigative arm of the household.”
No one has asked them to investigate.
“By maintaining student confidentiality”
The only privacy a child has from their parents is what they choose not to tell anyone.
A child has no right to privacy with respect to its parents.
“schools are not ‘deceiving’ parents”
Of course they are.
“they are adhering to privacy standards”
There is no childs right to privacy regarding their parents.
“that allow students to navigate their identity at their own pace.”
Not relevant to anything.
Regardless the mandate for schools is education, not managing a student “navaigating their identity”
“Furthermore, a critical distinction exists between identity and endangerment.”
Correct, where there is a CLEAR danger to the student by the parent – such as physical or sexual abuse,
The School is mandated to report, and LAW ENFORCEMENT steps in to properly adjudicate.
A school is as obligated to provide a parent with information regarding their “gender” behavior at school,
as it is to report grades, or bullying or any other aspects of a students behavior.
Manditory reporting laws require Schools and other to report potential criminal conduct regarding children to law enforcement.
They have absolutely NOTHING to do with any of this.
Reporting issues to law enforcement does NOT alter the obligation of schools to report on the behavior of students to parents.
You keep trying to manufacture from thin air some childrens right to privacy – but there is no such right.
Particularly not with respect to parents.
Mandatory reporters can have LAW ENFORCEMENT step between parents and children where there is evidence of crimes involving children.
That still does not create some right to privacy for children.
Schools are babysitters that are also supposed to teach. Baby sitters report to the parents.
S. Meyer. Schools are babysitters? What? No, schools are not baby sitters.
Try using the full quote. “Schools are babysitters that are also supposed to teach.”
“Pbinca, no the law does not assume such a thing. The law prevents schools from basically being snitches on students who do not want parents to find out about their choice to identify as a particular gender.”
Correct, parents are entitled to whatever knowledge a school may have regarding their children.
Without that knowledge how can the parent assess the best interests of their children.
“It should be a student’s choice to tell their parents. Not the schools or state officials.”
A student can chose to tell people something or not. But once they have spoken, they can not preclude their parents from knowledge of what they have said.
If a child said they were suicidal – are you going to deny parents knowledge of that ?
If a child said they wanted to kill a sibling – are you going to deny parents that knowledge ?
We have already ceded far to much regarding kids to schools.
There are lots of bad parents
But they state makes a fr worse parent.
Regardless, the state is NOT the parent of children.
“Parents want schools to essentially be parents in absence of THEIR presence. ”
It does not matter what parents want, or what schools want.
The responsibillity for children rests with the parents.
Not Teachers, not schools.
Parents can change schools.
Schools can not change parents.
Kids can not change parents.
It’s absurd and couldn’t happen because of disability laws that cannot exclude parents signatures and disclosure.
Oh please, spate us your opinion.
“Hullbobby, the problem is not the case itself. It’s the abuse of the “shadow docket” to bypass the full appellate process. The three dissenting justices did not argue on the merits of the case. They objected to the “skipping the line” method to review this case. Turley did not mention this because it gives him an excuse to trumpet a “victory” of sorts when the reality is the previous court ruling supporting parents could still be overturned.”
SCOTUS corrected an error with the lower courts. The parents are likely to prevail on the merits, and the lower court should have blocked the mew law until a full hearing on the merits occured.
It is the State that is disrupting the status quo with a law that infringes on parental rights. The burden is on the state to prove that necescary – which they will not be able to.
You are correct this issue will still be addressed on its merits and likely return to SCOTUS at that time.
In the meantime the state is NOT free to F#$K around with kids.
“A plain reading shows it is a safety measure designed to protect vulnerable students from being “outed” into potentially abusive home environments.”
A plain reading show an awful lot of nearly always FALSE assumptions made in order to further erode parents rights.
Some parents will be OK with their kids gender preferences, some will not.
Most kids who make unusual gender preference will ultimately discover they are wrong.
Frankly the whole area has massive problems. Neither Gender nor even sexual orientation has been established as immutable.
We do not know if these are choices or if they are biological.
It does not matter – so long as they are confined to the individual adult.
But it matters a great deal when you use FORCE to compel others to ACT based on a CHOICE made by another.
That is tyranny. Your choices can not result in the use of FORCE to compel others to act in a specified way.
Regardless, the state can not step in and use FORCE to impose what may be little more than whims of some children.
“Kagan was pointing out the majority’s procedural overreach. Not whether the parents rights were violated.”
The law is clearly in conflict with the rights of parents. It is therefore presumptively unconstitutional. The court AFTER hearings can conclude that the state has met its burden to infringe on a right – but the courts can not presume that at the start.
Kagan is wrong.
Further, the burden of proof that an infringement on rights is both a necescity and done in the least infringing way rests on the state when it passes a new law.
Again Kagan is wrong.
Buried in All your posts regarding Children is this odd presumption that children are just minature adults.
That they have the same rights, some judgement, same abilities as adults.
Issues involving children are among the most difficult societal problems we have to deal with.
The are difficult specifically because Children are NOT the same as adults.
If you were arguing that some 15yr olds are better at making life decisions than others – you would have a point.
Over thousands of years we have adopted a process of children transitioning to adults that is mostly based on acquiring rights here and there at relatively arbitrary ages.
I will be happy to listen to some proposal that can be made to work that more accurately reflects the fact that the transition to adult is gradula and does not progress they same for each child. But in all of human existance we have not found a workable alternative to what we have today. The arbitrary ages vary from country to country, but the process is the same.
That is how our – the whole worlds system of dealing with children works – parents have near total control until some arbitrary age in which a child suddenly gains a few rights,
until finally they are fully treated as adults.
You keep trying to ignore the FACT that that is not the american system, that is not the Western system, that is near universally the worlds system.
You want to change that – Fine. Do so openly, not by subtrefuge. Propose a different scheme and then get super majorities of people to prefer it over what we have.
There is no doubt what we have is far from perfect.
To paraphrase churchill – our framework for transitioning children to adults is there worst possible system – Except all others.
But you do permutations of this with ALL your arguments.
You ignore what is, that has come about over milenia, that we all agree is not perfect. And you assume something different.
You do not propose it, you do not persuade super majorities of people to accept change, You just pretend that you can change some portion of what is – not by constitutional or democratic process, but by fiat. And that it will work better – without your ever having actually tested it – not in reality, and not even logically tested it.
You presume you can replace what is – because it is less than perfect, with your whim, almost always ideas that have a long past history of failure, and that you can then impose that by force on others, because you want to.
BULL HOBBY
Try this, written in 1788, for your “plain reading and understanding of the Constitution.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
BULL HOBBY,
Try this, written in 1788, for your “plain reading and understanding of the Constitution.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Duplicate, compliments of the frequently confused WordPress.
The avenue in is via disabilities. Psychologists are most likely in the game and write plans including what is needed.
Waiting to hear from X saying that the Court got it wrong and parents should have no right to be informed about anything their kids are doing. Then Anonymous will write that Turley shouldn’t write about this SCOTUS ruling and should instead write about how Trump once went to a dinner where Epstein was also at.
X will say that the school nurse can’t give a student an aspirin without parental authority but should be able to drive a 15 year old girl to get an abortion due to “privacy”.
Funny how X’s words get so deep under your thin skin. At least X has a coherent opinion, You? You just scream and rant sedition.
X has never been coherent.
Coherent? Um… that’s a mouthful coming from you.
ATS neither you nor any of the rest of you on the left respond to the arguments or facts or logic in my posts.
You do not do so when they are long point by point dismemberment of your own posts.
You do not do so when they are short concise and trivial to understand.
You deflect, disemble, lie engage in ad hominem and other fallacies.
You try to shift the argument way from the facts, logic, reason to personality, style, insults, confession through projection,
anything except addressing the argument.
It is delicious listing to you rant about coherence – when you can not even stay on the topic.
John you’re rarely coherent. Your long-running posts often go off on weird tangents and non-sequiturs in the need to keep on making a point that is rarely made.
“non-sequitur” A word non-lawyer George learned on this blog, now he likes to use it alot.
He learned it because he keeps being informed his arguments are fallacious non-sequiturs.
Then, what is it that you seem to need to be drawn to his blog?
X, your observation about John Say is correct.
He is by far the most incoherent commenter on this blog.
His problem is that he is profoundly mentally ill.
The term for his rambling comments is “disorganized thinking”, of the type defined as circumstantiality, whereby his rambling drifts off on unrelated tangents in ways that he thinks make his point more clear, but in reality he simply gets lost in tangential issues and the point he is trying to make becomes obscured in his word salads of nonsensicality.
I don’t have anything against john say, but he could shorten his responses more often. The long running posts seem to be a debate tactic. Spew out a litany of points and views that it makes it impractical to respond to every one of them. He seems to “flood the zone” in lieu of a real discussion.
The complexity of my comments on your posts is a direct result of the number of errors in your posts.
Make more coherent arguments and fewer errors, and my replies will be shorter.
Don’t screw up established principles often millenia old and I will not have to go all the way back to moses or hamurabi to explain the rule of law or something similar to you.
More amateur psychology by ATS.
Another non sequitur.
X calling Say out about weird tangents, non-sequiturs, pointlessness. The one thing he’s not… is a liar like you George.
Noticed your comments are rather thin nowadays.
Do you miss your AI?
ROFL
X – You make false claims.
I point out those claims are false – usually with facts.
You respond with personal attacks.
Your the one that is incoherent and unable to stay on topic.
Do you have anything to say about the actual topic ?
The Lefts efforts to use the FORCE of the state to violate the rights of parents.
John Say,
“ I point out those claims are false – usually with facts.”
Usually? Hardly. You engage in assumptions, speculation, and conclusions. You rarely back up your claims with facts or evidence.
“ You respond with personal attacks.
You’re the one that is incoherent and unable to stay on topic.”
Personal attacks? Hardly. I return snarky retorts when they are deserved.
John Say,
Well said and true. That is why I generally just scroll past. Not worth reading. Only time it is, is to understand the context when you dismantle X.
Upstate, he’s coherent. We just start from different first principles. Privacy-first leads to secrecy from parents. Parent-first leads to transparency.
The real debate is about which authority comes first: Privacy or Parents?
There can be no “privacy-first” infants have no privacy with respect to their mothers.
Inarguably as human offspring evolve to adults they slowly develop sufficiently to acquire the rights of adults.
But our law does not an practically can not dole out rights to children gradually based on their development.
We have a series of laws that assigns specific rights at specific ages.
This is an imperfect solution.
We do not have a better one.
If you have one – I am listening.
REGARDLESS, children start with NO rights to privacy with respect to their parents, and when they are adults have Full rights to privacy.
I’m with you on age thresholds. But minors do have rights. The issue is who holds the primary duty over them during minority. Traditionally, that’s the parents unless abuse is shown.
Coherent position?
So, some XX person who sincerely believes they’re a boy, can live out their dreams six hours a day, while returning to girl status the other 18?
Funny how you never have a cogent argument.
Funny how you never ever made a cogent argument.
I think you confuse “coherent” with “consistent.”
When you create a chaos, and you think you can control its outcome, you are surely a fool. With gender affirming care, diminished parental rights, unattended water management, idiotic forest management, free medical care, outrageous gasoline prices, reckless spending, and unlimited/unaddressed homeless issues, this is today’s California. The latest court decision, while welcome, is but a drop in California’s problems.
The historical context is that the Nazi regime, through organizations like the Hitler Youth, sought to indoctrinate children and remove them from their parents’ influence to control the future of Germany. Membership in the Hitler Youth became mandatory for eligible children by 1939, with penalties for parents who did not comply.
Custody Battles (AB 957): The California State Assembly passed a bill (AB 957) that requires judges in custody cases to consider whether a parent affirms a child’s gender identity as part of the “health, safety, and welfare” of the child. Opponents argue this could lead to parents losing custody if they do not support gender-affirming care.
At one time it was known as child indoctrination. Today it’s simply known as grooming.
Different time same ideology.
Indoctrinate? You thought that through eh? Oh please…. the Chinese, Cambodians, Yugoslavians, Iranians, Russians, Americans etc. all do and have done that.
TiT,
Well said.
Growing up, in school, there were a variety of clubs or extra curricular activities students could join. No one was forced to be indoctrinated into any ideology and the school system and state certainly did not.
It may take quite a while to understand where this gender insanity came from and how it gained power.
It is most definitely a sickness on the part of far too many so-called adults. Teachers meddling with childrens’ heads, doctors drugging and chopping off childrens’ parts, and politicians using the psychosis as a platform.
Americans are far too tolerant but they eventually wake up. Had the court failed its citizens I think parents would have become vigilantes, and rightly so. The courts had better clean up this mess thoroughly. Teachers need to be taught hard lessons on boundaries, doctors to be prosecuted, and politicians ousted.
“It may take quite a while to understand where this gender insanity came from and how it gained power.” Source: Oldfish
The concept of gender identity began to take shape in the 1950s and 1960s within clinical and psychological discourse. The term itself was first used in 1963, in papers presented by UCLA psychiatrists Robert Stoller and Ralph Greenson at the 23rd International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Stockholm. They defined gender identity as “the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs” — a personal awareness of being male or female. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity
It started during you early lifetime. And you did nothing to stop it. We blame you.
So you’re saying that the weakness of the proclivity to appeal to authority let malicious academics and politicians propagate this mental disease? The academics are acting very Mao towards children. Let’s round ’em up and take ’em behind the woodshed. It’s what George Washington would’ve done.
I’m aware of what you summarized. I think there’s a bit more to the recent decade’s explosion of the insanity. Foreign malign money influencing US education and media. Who benefits from the destruction of Western men? We have many enemies.
Oh course that’s not what was said.
I get it that you, think you’re a rhetorical wizard. You ain’t.
You wrote you didn’t even know when gender ideology became a concept.
Anonymous slaps on a paragraph from AI and then concludes with his own level of stupidity.
Slap on AI. Its sourced you dumbass, from wikipedia. Do you actually try to be stupid or is it your natural state?
Ooh, it’s “sourced” from Wikipedia. Wow, now I guess it is officially the truth. It’s something else watching you try to make an argument by citing Wikipedia. What’s next the Guardian, Salon, Rachel Maddow?
Watch how quickly Democrats attack the Supreme Court, just two weeks after criticizing Trump for doing the same thing.
Nearly two decades ago it was published that the US FDA (e.g., common allergen, incomplete protein, phytoestrogen rich US soy mostly processed with toxic hexane with some residue by the early 1970s) was responsible for a lot of boys going gay and men having enlarged breasts, with the US Female breast cancer epidemic presenting by 1979 (ACS and NCI data). For this lay senior citizen it continues to beg the question: is professional America ever going to learn to identify and eliminate the underlying causes of serious problems or simply continue to debate the most obvious symptoms, indefinitely? https://www.wnd.com/2006/12/39253/ Charles G. Shaver
Earth to anon ….
More to the point of the professor’s comments, I do not accept that any Americans, adults or children, are the property of the state(s). More specifically, minor children are ‘extensions’ of their parents. To chemically alter the natural character of American children for higher pseudo-food profits is an act of treason, with both sides of the political aisle acting on behalf of the ruthless rich. “Prove me wrong!” Charlie Shaver
Accept it all you want, but when they come knocking ….
No industry should have legal immunity from liability.
How about old fish?
Neither should any level of government. CGS
So, if somebody steps in front of my car as I drive down the street, GM is liable?
This case is about formation. And yes, there is an ideology behind it.
The Supreme Court said in Pierce that the child is not the creature of the state. That was not poetry. It was a structural boundary.
When government policies withhold critical information from parents in order to shape identity independently, that reflects a belief about who should form the child first.
That belief is not neutral. It places formative authority in the state rather than the family.
A constitutional republic depends on families forming citizens before the state refines them. Reverse that order and you alter the nature of the republic itself.
Structure alone does not preserve liberty. Formation does.
“A constitutional republic depends on families forming citizens before the state refines them. Reverse that order and you alter the nature of the republic itself.”
Beautifully said!
Thank you Mary. Wait and see. The usual suspects will be on the attack as they represent what “state-formed” citizens are like.
Nature of the republic? Really? Hallmark level nonsense.
“A constitutional republic depends on families forming citizens .. Really? What if the parent abrogates? State responsibility then. Certainly not your ilk, who famously failed two generations of American children. You take no responsibility for that eh? Just whining about constitutional republic. Your words are hollow and empty.
” The usual suspects will be on the attack a…” Whining again eh? Your a$$ has been ripped to shreds so many times it’s became a circus. And your response is to insult and run.
Yes, if a parent truly abandons responsibility, the state can intervene. That has always been true.
But we don’t build constitutional principles around worst-case exceptions.
The default in a free society is parental primacy. State intervention is the exception, not the starting point.
Turning the exception into the rule is how boundaries disappear.
Anon slapped you down again Olly. Play all the silly word games you want, you again avoid the fact your generation’s abrogation of parenting?
you again avoid the fact your generation’s abrogation….
Svelaz / X / George reveals what some of us deduced from his word utilization: he is a young dork, an undeveloped, emotionally repressed, retard
OLLY,
“State intervention is the exception, not the starting point.”
Seems the failed state of CA wants state intervention from conception.
Upstate, we’re in California. We pay for private school because formation matters to us. It’s costly and it forces tradeoffs. Even so, social media pushes ideas that don’t always align with what we teach. That just means we stay engaged.
Which is why schools shouldn’t bypass parents. Formation starts at home.
Compulsory public schools are unconstitutional.
The word education does not exist in the Constitution.
The Constitution doesn’t contain the word “education,” but it also doesn’t contain the word “roads,” “police,” or “fire departments.”
Public education has historically been a state and local function under reserved powers.
Whether compulsory attendance laws are wise is a policy debate. Claiming they are automatically unconstitutional because the word “education” isn’t in the text is not a serious constitutional argument.
Americans enjoy primary, fundamental, and superior constitutional rights and freedoms to direct the educations of their children per the 9th and 14th Amendments.
Parents enjoy the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and shall not be discriminated against by being compelled to pay taxes for an education system they decline and do not use and by being compelled to pay twice for the education of their child when others are compelled to pay only once.
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AI Overview
Yesterday, March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court in Mirabelli v. Bonta ruled against California’s secrecy policies, the Court affirmed that parents are the “primary protectors” of their children and that the state cannot create a “parent-free zone.”
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AI Overview
The Ninth Amendment serves as a vital safeguard for unenumerated rights, ensuring that the Bill of Rights is not viewed as an exhaustive list of human liberties. Together with the Fourteenth Amendment, it provides the constitutional foundation for the fundamental right of citizens to direct the education and upbringing of their children. Under the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, these federal constitutional rights maintain absolute primacy and superiority over any and all state statutes. Consequently, any California law or policy—including those attempting to restrict parental notification or oversight—is secondary to the supreme authority of the Constitution.
This legal hierarchy was recently affirmed on March 2, 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a 2024 California law (AB 1955) and related policies defended by Attorney General Rob Bonta that sought to prevent schools from notifying parents about changes to their child’s gender identity. In its 6-3 ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court held that such “secrecy policies” likely violate parents’ constitutional rights to oversee their children’s care and mental health, effectively overriding the state’s attempt to mandate non-disclosure.
Olly,
Sorry to hijack your post by changing the subject, but I wanted to inform you that our past exchanges have caused me to look deeper into Constitutional principles. This has prompted me to take Hillsdale’s “Federalist” online course, which I have been thoroughly enjoying. This in turn has caused me to go and get my own copy of the Federalist Papers. My plan is to start reading it after I’m done with the course. I’m just hoping I will be able to understand it’s pages since I’m an engineer and mastering the English language has always been a struggle. Amazing/interesting to see the depth of knowledge that these great men had. It really brings out how special it was that they did what they did. I’m doubtful the people of Iran will have such luck after we leave them with the opportunity they will shortly be presented with. So I wanted to thank you.
Jim
Jim, I really appreciate you saying that. That means a lot. Hillsdale does a great job pushing people back to the original sources. The Federalist Papers aren’t easy at first. I struggled too. It clicked more for me once I dug deeper into the Declaration and understood the principles behind the structure. The fact that you’re taking the time to study this stuff is what keeps a republic alive.
At some point, you might also check out Lincoln’s short Fragment on the Constitution and the Union. It’s only a few paragraphs, but it beautifully ties the Declaration and the Constitution together. It made a big difference for me. And when you uncover insights along the way, bring them back here. I’m always ready to learn too.
Keep going. It’s worth it.
One thing I’m learning becoming more aware of is how people bring up the Constitution frequently (not necessarily a bad thing) and push aside or barely reference the Declaration. When it’s the role of the Constitution to protect what is contained within the Declaration. The more I dive into all of this, the more it becomes apparent that there seems a need for a parallel to the very common Bible study groups. It would certainly help this country if there were founding document studies by the public.
I just got done with a lecture dealing with Federalist 55-57 where Madison talks about the House. It was timely since yesterday I was just having a conversation with a co-worker on the subject of corruption in Congress. I’m glad to report that I argued back at every complaint my co-worker had about congress, could be blamed on us. The House it would seem is just a reflection of who we are as a society and looking in that mirror rightfully so, gets us upset. There is also an interesting argument against term limits for the Executive and Legislative.
I will check out the Lincoln reference. Here’s to Publius!
Jim, this is great to read. You’re connecting the pieces.
You’re exactly right. The Constitution protects what the Declaration proclaims. When we skip the foundation, we end up arguing over procedures without remembering the principles they were built to preserve. Madison in 55–57 is humbling. The House reflects us. If we don’t like what we see, the mirror is not the first thing to blame.
Founding document study groups? I think that’s a healthy idea. A republic requires citizens who understand what they’ve inherited.
In the end, the ceiling of government competence will never rise above the citizen’s capacity for self-government.
Olly, regarding Lincoln’s Fragment on the Constitution and the Union, I think it was you who provided this phrase or something similar a long time ago on this blog. An examination of the following quote from “ “Fragment” is very revealing.
“The picture was made for the apple–not the apple for the picture.”
SM, that’s exactly the relationship Lincoln was describing. The frame exists to hold and protect the apple.
If we forget that relationship, the apple slowly slips out of the frame. The Constitution may still hang on the wall, but the principle it was meant to secure begins to drift away.
And once the apple is gone, all that’s left are laws without a fundamental purpose. When laws are detached from first principles, they no longer restrain power. They simply reflect the will of whoever holds it.
That is thought-provoking. I look at it in two ways secular and biblical. The Biblical has the apple in the center (The Core values) and the Toran opened below. Then I see the Mitzvahs on either side
.
SM, you made me consider something: If the frame exists to protect the apple, then the real test is simple: is the apple still centered in the frame today? And if it’s not, what do you think caused it to drift?
I’m not sure of your focus. In the most simple form, American secular and Biblical traditions share the same core values. Drifting starts when feelings replace values. Even reasoning cannot always keep the apple from drifting, for a person can choose wrongly even with good reasoning skills.
One more step for sanity. Still many more steps to take. It’s going to take years to eliminate this “movement”. Gender Dysphoria Disorder is real but it needs to be dealt with by the child, the parents, physicians and clinical psychologists that are treating the child. The school should be peripheral to this process and their charge is education and to follow the directions of the parents in the care of the student while in school.
If the schools overstep this line then they do so at their own peril.
Transparency and openness is the best approach.
GEB,
“Transparency and openness is the best approach.”
I agree.
However, it appears to these radical leftist schools, teachers and admins, they prefer opaqueness and secrecy from parents and the law.
Wanna translate that into a coherent comment.
In the words of Pink Floyd, “Hey Teacher, leave those kids alone.”
Re:” Radical leftist school, teachers and administrators“…. Exist only at the will of the community. Do not send to know who was elected. Rather learn to know who voted…. And resist! Take back your children, and your communities from the totalitarian statists who have situated themselves precisely where they must be to bring down our Constitutional Republic.
Gender dysphoria is real and personal.
But at the civic level, we face something like national dysphoria when the state starts forming identity ahead of the family.
A republic depends on citizens formed first by families and communities, not by bureaucratic policy.
If the state becomes the primary architect, we should not be surprised when the country loses a clear sense of itself.
Senior dementia is real and personal. Watching you stumble and fall is a sad sight indeed.
GEB, have you read any Miriam Grossman, M.D. books or seen her talk? She is a child psychiatrist with 40+ years in the trenches. She has vast experience in this area and speaks with a great deal of clinical wisdom. If you haven’t, I recommend you look her up. There are a number of YouTube videos of her testifying and she has also been interviewed on American Thought Leaders (Epoch Times).
FYI you can’t change gender, it is DNA based. It would be like saying you became a cat…YOU can’t!
When you dress up as a cat, you are a cat. When you dress up a woman, you are a woman.
anyone harming a child’s sex organs should be jailed for life
A teacher brain washing a child should be jailed!
“Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. Justice Kagan decried the rejection of California’s priorities and objected to “throwing over its policies in a slapdash way.”
The essence of deranged liberal justification. Why are liberal women detached from reality? We should aspire to taking away women’s voting right in the USA.
By the opinions of the three liberal justices we should understand what the Democrat Party has in mind when it intends to pack the court should it ever gain the power to do so. it would mean the demise of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Individual liberty would be replaced by the will of government.
One small step for heterosexuals, one giant leap for parents.
This is an argument that defines our current divide; how can anyone state that we “assign decisions to the expertise of school officials?” Who thinks that parents should take a back seat to the state? Just absurd!
But here we are, just imagine discussing this subject 25 years ago. Anyone proposing what California just passed would have been laughed out of the room. These people have no issues with life altering surgeries for minors. The inmates are truly running the asylum
Re: “ The inmates are truly running the asylum.” A most insightful way of describing the S(s)tate of California and the minority rule which has subsumed the rights and privileges of the general population. Common sense gone to hell in a handbasket.All the devils are here.