By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear another bid by parents suing a public school district over actions by teachers and officials to support students’ gender identity without disclosing name or pronoun changes to parents without the child’s consent.
A lower court dismissed an appeal by the parents of a student who identified as non-binary while attending a middle school in Florida’s capital, Tallahassee, after judges rejected their case. The justices returned a similar case from Massachusetts last week.
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 of the US Constitution.
Controversies continue across the United States over efforts to support and protect the privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students. The court previously rejected similar challenges in Wisconsin and Maryland.
The Supreme Court in March blocked measures in California that would have limited the sharing of information with parents about the gender identity of transgender public school students without the children’s permission.
Acting on an emergency request by Christian parents to reinstate a judge’s ruling in their favor, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority ruled that California’s policies violated the parents’ due process rights, as well as the parents’ religious beliefs about sex and gender.
The court is also facing sweeping 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.
The Florida parents, Jan and Jeffrey Littlejohn, said in court documents that officials at Tallahassee’s Deerlake Middle School, part of the Lyon County School Board, created a “confidential gender confirmation plan” for their 13-year-old in 2020 after the student began questioning gender identity. The parents refused to allow their child to change their name and use the pronouns “they, them”.
In 2018, the school board developed a guide for students to disclose that they are transgender or gender nonconforming to school. Keeping in mind the potential dangers of expelling such students, the guide said authorities should seek the child’s consent before notifying the parents.
The Littlejohns filed suit in federal court in 2021 against the school board and some officials. The parents claimed that the board’s gender support guide and withholding information from them undermined their 14th Amendment rights, which the Supreme Court has long protected as the fundamental right of parents to direct their care and upbringing.
A judge dismissed the case, and the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in 2025. The 11th Circuit concluded that, under Supreme Court precedent, in order to pursue a claim of the kind alleged by the parents, the authorities must have violated this right. did not
School officials did not force the Littlejohns’ child to take any action, the 11th Circuit said.
“And perhaps most importantly, the defendants did not act with intent to injure. On the contrary, they sought to help the child,” it added.
The school board’s guide has been updated in response to Florida’s 2021 law strengthening parents’ rights, and now says officials should not withhold information from parents “unless a reasonable person would believe disclosure would cause abuse, neglect or neglect.”
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
