In the law, the concept of In loco parentis refers to those who act in the place of parents. The problem is when that authority is taken rather than granted. It is a growing problem in blue states as parents push back on Democratic measures stripping them of notice or consent over their children in public schools.
In the last few months, Democrats have been buoyed by protests over immigration enforcement. Many politicians have fueled a wave of rage sweeping major cities before the midterm elections, denouncing law enforcement as “Gestapo” and “Nazis.”
However, a Supreme Court decision this week may lay bare an even greater threat to Democratic aspirations over parental rights. For many parents, blue states are attacking the most fundamental right of citizens in raising their own children.
This week, the Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal filed on behalf of Catholic parents in California. The order in Mirabelli v. Bonta proved a decisive victory for parental rights and an equally notable defeat for California democrats.
The action, filed by the Thomas More Society, challenged a policy under a state law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024, that prevented teachers from notifying parents of their children’s gender identity changes. The law was heralded as a protection against the “outing” of transgender students.
Some of us have been following the litigation since the original filing and heralded the decision of District Court Judge Roger Benitez, who wrote a powerful opinion in support of the rights of all parents. However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed his injunction.
In issuing the order on its “shadow docket,” the Court delivered a key win for parental rights that many of us have been seeking for years.
Blue state legislators and educators have been waging a war on parental rights, particularly in the area of transgender policies. Recently, in Michigan, parents sued to defend their rights after the Rockford Public School District refused to inform them of gender identity changes in their children.
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 Massachusetts parents Marissa Silvestri and Stephen Foote seeking such notice. As in the California case, they learned that school administrators did not inform them that their 11-year-old child had self-declared as “genderqueer” and that teachers and staff were using a new name and new pronouns for the student.
The First Circuit dismissed the right of parents over their own children in the case, holding that “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.”
Foote was a chilling decision that reflected the view of state officials that parents give up their rights over their children when enrolling them in public schools
That view was evident in the comment of State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Wis.), who once tweeted: “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.”
For many of us, there is no more fundamental right than the control over the raising of one’s children. This view was reflected in prior Supreme Court decisions, such as Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), when the Court declared “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.”
In 2000, in Troxel v. Granville, the court recognized “the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”
Yet the Court has failed to articulate a clear standard for protecting parental rights, as it has for other fundamental rights. The result has been a coordinated campaign to limit and marginalize parental rights in public schools.
Mirabelli may reflect a critical turning point in this fight.
The Supreme Court sided with the parents in restoring the injunction as the case continues.
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.”
The unsigned opinion did not lay out a clear foundation for protecting parental rights. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wanted to go further in ruling on the merits in favor of the parents. Both free exercise and substantive due process claims were raised, but it is unclear where the justices fell on the merits of those claims.
Perhaps Foote will allow the Court the opportunity to take the result in this case and convert it into a long-needed comprehensive protection for parental rights. (A petition for review in Foote is currently pending with the Court.)
Democrats have already put themselves at odds with the vast majority of citizens on issues such as transgender students competing in girls’ sports. However, parental rights present a far greater political threat. There is nothing more personal or sacred to parents than the upbringing of their children. Yet, blue states have fought parents doggedly in courts.
In public, Democratic politicians have dismissed parental rights. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Cal.), who is running for governor of California, actually mocked parental calls for consent over key aspects of children’s education in public schools. He insisted that parent consent was like “putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? Please tell me what I’m missing here … This is so stupid.”
The coming election may determine not only the importance of parental rights but the “stupidity” of those who oppose them. In the meantime, parents just secured a long-needed boost from the Supreme Court.
What we need now is to move this issue from the shadow docket into the light of day with a full opinion that protects parental rights alongside other fundamental constitutional rights.
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.”
Hold up, the snake in the grass dem in Wisconsin dares to steal our money(taxes) and act as high and mighty agile sticking his nose up at the very people he steals from and tells them to use the remaining funds from your coffers that I forcefully took from you…. Permit period by the way. And don’t even get me started on the other mundane taxes we siphoned and don’t utilize for public purposes properly.
STOP VOTING THESE RADICAL FREAKS IN TL OFFICE.
The two Truley posts today are in conflict. One promotes parental rights to the point that it will cause minors to be abused and/or kicked out of their house. The second post is saying that parents do not have the right to provide medical care to their children. The only consistant theme is anti-LGBT and hurting minors.
There is no anti-LGBT theme and the only ones hurting minors are the states who pass laws to keep information from children’s parents.
Keep dreaming?
To the contrary, the common theme is protecting children from lifelong harm, and protecting the constitutional rights of their parents.
@Anonymous
You are an idiot. Certified by this community. Go blow.
So-called “gender affirmative care” for minors is not proven medical care, as the peer-reviewed HHS study shows. Its risks outweigh the benefits, and it is unethical. Standing behind it are the financial interests of the pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors, and the financial and ideological interests of activists. Children are the victims. The Trump administration is right to attack it. When the dust settles, this will come to be seen as one of the worst medical scandals in history.
Every Fascist regime in history knew that, in order to take over a country and remake society to accept authoritarian rule, it had to control the education of children. The Nazis did it. The Soviets did it. The Cambodians did it. The Vietnamese did it. The Cubans did it. The list is long. Take children away from home, indoctrinate them, and unlease them on society. It’s a simple plan for mass acceptance of totalitarianism.
Brief for Petitioners: Equal Protection Forbids Penalizing the Exercise of Fundamental Parental Rights Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Ninth Amendment and the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution secure the fundamental right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children. The State may not condition the exercise of that right on the surrender of equal treatment. By compelling all parents to fund public schools through taxation, yet conferring the full benefit of that funding only upon those who utilize the government system, the State imposes a unique and unequal financial burden on parents who lawfully choose private education. Because the Constitution forbids penalizing the exercise of a fundamental right or discriminating among similarly situated citizens without sufficient justification, such a scheme cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.
We will be completely LOST if and when the State ever gets to raise our children. America as we know it, will die a very painful death.
Have you never heard of the communist teachers’ unions? Karl Marx has been the one to “raise our children” since his fellow traveler, Lincoln, let him in the door in 1860. America was completely LOST at that inflection point when the incremental implementation of communism commenced. Look around you, Einstein! The first thing Lincoln taught was that since secession is not prohibited, secession is prohibited. Reprehensible slavery should and must have been legally abrogated by Congress if America is a society of laws.
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, CRT, DEI, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, PBS, NPR, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Read Article 1, Section 8, and the absolute 5th Amendment right to private property. If constitutional rights and freedoms are not absolute, they don’t exist.
Not only is public education intent on usurping parental rights, for decades it has been targeting its usurpation at younger and younger children (with some of these predators calling for “school age” to begin as early as age two).
Sorry folks. Bigger concern right now. Megyn Kelly is freaking over our war in Iran. She is beginning to be persuaded that we are making a huge mistake. She demands to know what our mission is. She claims Trump has not stated it. Megyn, I wrote you just now and told you he made it abundantly clear, kiddo. IRAN WILL NOT, IRAN CAN NOT GET A THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON! PERIOD! That’s our policy. Trump is the only person in a position who is willing to and is doing something about it.
He did destroy their centrifuges. He did not say he obliterated their capacity to use a nuke. North Korea can give or sell them one. They likely have black market sources where they can purchase the parts to put one together, or at least they will build a dirty bomb in the meantime. Now is the time to remove their willingness, their devotion, their fanaticism, their openness to use WMD. It is our top priority. Because, if we do not stop them now, we never will.
They live to destroy Israel and us. They are an ancient culture with great patience. We want to forget about them. We can’t. They would love to sacrifice everything to obliterate us. They go right to heaven with the virgins. We forget. We think they want peace, too. Not while Israel exists.
The lefts talking point “Well North Korea”, if you really believe that I’ve got a bridge for sale, if Iran were to obtain the bomb or parts thereof from any entity, they open themselves to possible retaliatory action regardless of if they were to use it or not.
Me thinks you’re making a positive strawman argument.
People who oppose someone else’s rights in politically-sensitive areas — such as cake baking for same-sex weddings, or parental notification for child sex changes — often fail to recognize that their rights are on the line too. Using those two examples:
1. People who want Jack Phillips to lose are unaware that if he loses, then a liberal-Democrat cake baker will have no 1st Amendment protection when they refuse to bake a cake saying that homosexuality is wrong.
2. People who want the parents to lose in this type of case are unaware that, if they lose, then liberal-Democrat parents will have no claim against a public school district that secretly de-transitions their children or secretly gives their homosexual high-schooler conversion therapy to try and make him heterosexual.
Because of this, sometimes you’ll find a Black lawyer defending the KKK, either in a freedom-of-speech case, or in the KKK’s attempt to prevent the government from forcing it to divulge its private donors, or in the KKK’s effort to participate in adopt-a-highway, and the like (examples can be found with a google search). When questioned, the Black lawyer usually points out that the legal principle is an important one to defend, and if the KKK loses that affects the goog guys too (like the NAACP having to hand over its private donor list to the government).
“People who oppose someone else’s rights in politically-sensitive areas —…” Like what you and your ilk do here?
Care to list any examples?
What rights is OldManFromKS opposing here?
It is amusing that Swallwell would mock parents wanting to “be in charge of their surgeries”, because the protocol, until recent pushback, has been to leave children in charge of their own diagnoses —- if a kid says he/she is trans then he/she is and to push back is to risk the child’s suicide.
Also, patients have the right to make medical decisions affecting themselves. Swallwell’s analogy is inapt. Patients do get to decide if they want the surgery or not.
Um… what about those in a coma without life directives?
Good point. I was referring to people who are not in a coma.
OldManFromKS,
I was tracking you.
I am curious about the internal discussions within the court system. In the Mirabelli v Bonta case the Ninth Circuit court stayed the District Court’s injunction in part because in the words of the Supreme court’s unsigned opinion, “The Ninth Circuit also expressed doubts about the District Court’s decision on the merits. ” Now the Supreme Court weighs in using its 4 factor decision logic one of which is making a preliminary assessment of the likelihood of the success of the plaintiffs – that is the merits of the case. When the Circuit court has said that it will most likely overturn the District court’s ruling and the Supreme court has said that in that case they would overturn the Circuit court’s ruling, does the Circuit court then go back and reconsider or do they plow ahead with this Kabuki theater daring the Supreme court to over turn them? Do Circuit courts, when faced with a probable overturn, change their opinions? While this situation is likely rare, it is surely not the first case. I am a bit curious as it speaks to the dynamics of the alignment by lower courts with the Supreme court views.
This may be an unusual take on Dr. Turley’s column, but here it is: Ever since I was a kid playing in the neighborhood, some of my friends were obsessed with the rules. They seemed to care more about the rules than the game itself. That urge to follow every rule, and to invent new ones. This always struck me as an indirect way to control the game.
The same pattern holds for adults. The rule-making class is naturally drawn away from Republicans because of the party’s emphasis on individualism. Democrats, by contrast, love rules and love creating them, regardless of how much those rules infringe on others. As a result, almost everyone in this class swings Democratic. Their latest fad is taking rights away from parents. In CA, they’ve already made rules for just about everything else.
Yes, definitely unusual. Keep it to yourself. Thanks
gdonaldallen,
Controlling the game. Seems that is what these politicians are trying to do, but with other peoples families.
Come On Man! In the BLUE COMMUNIST STATES the Collective raises the child NOT the Biologic Entities that created the child. Only the Illuminati of the Education Mafia and the Black Robe Cabal will decide what rights the Biologic Entities have -if any! And they will indoctrinate the littlest Comrades into the Collective so they can infiltrate the rest of the Non-Believers! Corruption begins at Home!
anyone harming kids sex organs or enabling it…should be jailed for LIFE
Like NY AG, Doctors, Parents, etc
Should be? Also define “harming”?
Democrats ally themselves with the Soviet State and German Nazis, as well as ChiComs and NORKs that children belong to the state and not the parents.
We need 100% school choice and vouchers.
Everyone knows that Eric Swalwell is a total moron. He is a fitting successor to Gavin Newsom.
While I understand your feelings, I would love to have the “Old Days” back. Which means no Democratic governor or democratic controlled legislature. As a native Californian that spent 65 of his 76 years there, (left 11 years ago) it is hard to give up hope that one day it will be a beautiful prosperous state.
Everyone knows ?Actually we were thinking that you were the best example of a “total moron”. The garbage, the hate, the ignorance you exhibit here is unsurpassed. Total moron, you definitely have the honor.
That we are even discussing this is ludicrous – as ludicrous as the notion that anyone can change their DNA, whatever persona they’d lie to present (and I’m live and let live; so long as we are talking about grown adults, I honestly don’t care, this is not that) – absurd on its face. That it is even being debated in the courts is madness.
Do not tell me the modern left are not full on Marxists in 2026. May the legal precedents in opposition continue for a long time to come, and may we have a period of sanity extensive enough that the dems don’t have the opportunity to permanently destroy our society, which they will, the first chance they get. Using the mental health of children as a pressure point is peak disgusting.
No one on the planet or the history of thinking human has ever came up with the notion one can change their DNA. Amazing how you can think so deeply.
And yet, far-leftist Democrats do believe children can wake up one morning and be a different sex then their biological one. Or even a cat or unicorn.
James,
I think it was you who recently said something to the effect of “20 years ago, we would of never even considered this.”
Up until recent times, it was a given of parental rights. No questions asked. That was just common sense. Now, we have states making laws to interfere with parents rights to raise their own children. It is crazy. And even crazier is we need a case to go to the SC and for the Court to pass down a majority decision with an opinion stating what parents right actually are. Written out.
You are echoing a common MAGA position where minors are the property of their parents and thus can be treated as bad as the parents want and disposed of at will. MAGAs support, champion child abuse.
You could not be more wrong. The MAGA position is to raise healthy, responsible, strong, children with a sense of family, community and nation. To be respectful of one’s elders, teachers, LEOs and all those who are worthy of respect. There are good parents out there and there are bad ones. Seems far-leftists who promote the mutilation and drug abuse of children in the name of “trans” are the ones who champion child abuse.
Then, you got these two stellar idiots, https://www.news18.com/world/gay-couple-in-us-sentenced-to-100-years-for-raping-adopted-sons-ws-ab-9167184.html
Has nothing with them being gay. They were just bad people who became bad parents.