Wisconsin Parents’ Challenge to School Transgender Support Plans Denied by Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down another case on issues involving transgender people, including one that sought to bring back a lawsuit against a public school district in Wisconsin and a policy that supports children’s gender identity that certain parents objected to on religious rights grounds and other reasons.

A group of parents of students in the Eau Claire Area School District, supported by two conservative legal organizations, appealed a lower court’s decision that they had the legal standing to file the complaint, but the Supreme Court rejected their appeal.

Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, all conservative justices, dissented from the court’s ruling rejecting the appeal.

The Wisconsin case is just one of the many transgender-related court battles sweeping across the US, including which sports teams and which restrooms transgender people are allowed to join.

The court was said to have a likely vote on a Tennessee law recently when it heard a pivotal case dealing with transgender rights December 4. The Supreme Court with its conservative majority of 6 to 3 upheld, seemed likely to do as Republican and Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration challenged the act forbidding transgender youth to take gender-affirming treatments.

The Eau Claire school system has instituted a policy that allows children to use the restroom that reflects their gender identity and changes their name and preferred pronouns without requiring parental notification or approval.

The case was filed in 2022 by a group called Parents Protecting Our Children and was brought by the conservative legal organizations Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and America First Legal. The parents argued that the district’s policy violated their rights to due process under the 14th Amendment and religious freedom under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

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As stated by the lawsuit, “most members of the group believe there are only two sexes and would not readily affirm whatever beliefs their children may hold regarding their gender.”.

The school district claims challengers have “grossly” misrepresented its policies to create an inclusive school environment. Parents can review any accommodation plan created to support the needs of transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming students in the student’s school file.

The challengers lacked legal standing to sue because, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker said, they did not suffer any personal injuries. The judge said that none of them had alleged that their child was transgender or that the district had applied the policy to them. In March, that ruling was upheld by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Chicago.