By Andrew Chung
April 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the bid of parents suing a public school district in Massachusetts over actions by teachers and officials to support students’ gender identity without disclosing parental name or pronoun changes without the child’s consent.
The justices dismissed an appeal by the parents of a student who identified himself as “sexist” while attending a middle school in Ludlow, Massachusetts, after a lower court dismissed his case.
The plaintiffs claimed that the authorities treated their child as non-binary and withheld this information from them in violation of their fundamental parental rights protected by the due process guarantee of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
The lawsuit follows a landmark March 2 court decision in California to block similar measures that would have limited the sharing of information with parents about the gender identity of transgender public school students without the child’s permission.
Controversies are playing out across the United States over efforts to support and protect the privacy of transgender and gender non-conforming students. In 2024, the court rejected similar challenges in Wisconsin and Maryland.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, also faces growing efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration and Republican-led states to restrict the rights of transgender people. In June 2025, the court upheld a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors in Tennessee. In January, the court also appeared ready to uphold a state law banning transgender players from women’s sports teams, pending a decision on the matter.
The Massachusetts parents, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, said in court documents that teachers and officials at Baird Middle School in Ludlow pushed “gender ideology” on children without the parents’ knowledge. As a result, the plaintiffs said, their 11-year-old son, known as “BF,” began to question the student’s gender identity.
After asking teachers and staff to use the new name and pronouns, the student also asked school officials to continue using the child’s original name and female pronouns when communicating with parents, according to court filings.
The child is identified as genderqueer, meaning someone who does not follow binary gender male-female norms.
The parents sued the city, the Ludlow School Committee and some officials, alleging their actions undermined their 14th Amendment due process rights, which the Supreme Court has long protected as the fundamental right of parents to direct the care and upbringing of their children.
The parents said the “so-called gender transition” is harmful and their objection is moral, not religious. They are represented at the Supreme Court by the Coalition Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.
A federal judge threw out the case in 2022. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the repeal in 2025, concluding that parents had not demonstrated a deprivation of their parental rights, including directing their child’s medical care.
The 1st Circuit said it was not convinced that “Ludlow’s mere allegation of use of a gender-affirming pronoun or a gender-affirming name is sufficient to warrant a claim that the school provided the student with medical treatment.”
School officials’ respect for students’ wishes about whether to disclose their gender identity to parents allows children to “express their identity without concern for parental backlash,” the 1st Circuit said, adding that the protocol does not compel students to withhold information or prevent parental actions outside of school.
“Parents remain free to try to mold their child according to the parent’s own beliefs,” the 1st Circuit said.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
