US Supreme Court rejects Massachusetts school gender-identity policy challenge
By Andrew Chung
April 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear parents’ bid to sue a Massachusetts public school district over actions by teachers and officials to promote students’ gender identity by failing to disclose to parents name or pronoun changes without children’s consent.
The justices rejected an appeal filed by the parents of a student who identified as “gender gay” while attending a middle school in Ludlow, Massachusetts, after a lower court dismissed the case.
The plaintiffs alleged that authorities treated their children as nonbinary and withheld this information from them, violating fundamental parental rights protected by the promise of due process in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The case follows a landmark decision by the court on March 2 to block similar measures in California that would limit information about the gender identity of transgender public school students from being shared with parents without the child’s permission.
Conflicts over efforts to promote and protect the privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students continue throughout the United States. The court in 2024 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 poised to uphold state laws banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports teams, and a ruling on that issue is still pending.
Massachusetts parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri said in court documents that teachers and officials at Baird Middle School in Ludlow imposed “gender ideology” on children without the parents’ knowledge. As a result, their 11-year-old child, known as “BF,” began questioning the student’s gender identity, the plaintiffs said.
After asking teachers and staff to use a new name and pronouns, the student asked school officials to continue using the child’s original name and female pronouns when communicating with parents, according to court records.
A child is defined as gender, meaning a person who does not conform to binary gender male-female norms.
Parents sued the town, the Ludlow School Committee and some officials, saying their actions undermined their 14th Amendment due process rights, which the Supreme Court has long believed protects parents’ fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their children.
Parents said the “so-called gender transition” was harmful and theirs was a moral, not religious, objection. They are represented at the Supreme Court by the conservative Christian legal group the Alliance Defending Liberty.
A federal judge dismissed the case in 2022. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of the case in 2025, finding that the parents were not sufficiently deprived of parental rights, including directing their children’s medical care.
The 1st Circuit said it was “unconvinced that simply asserting that Ludlow used gender-affirming pronouns or a gender-affirming name is sufficient to state the school’s claim that it provided medical treatment to the student.”
The 1st Circuit noted that school officials respecting students’ wishes about whether or not to disclose their gender identity to parents allows children to “express their identities without worrying about parental reaction,” adding that the protocol does not force students to withhold information or restrict parents’ actions outside of school.
1st Circuit holds: “Parents are free to seek to mold their children according to their parents’ own beliefs.” he said.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
