U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Appeal Regarding Eau Claire School District's Gender Support Policy

Tuesday, December 10th, 2024 -- 9:00 AM

(Corrinne Hess, Wisconsin Public Radio) The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Wisconsin parents challenging the Eau Claire Area School District’s gender support policy.

According to Corrinne Hess with Wisconsin Public Radio, the justices left in place an appellate court ruling dismissing the parents’ lawsuit. Three of nine justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, would have heard the case.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022 by a group called Parents Protecting Our Children, alleges an Eau Claire Area School District gender support plan violates their constitutional rights because it doesn’t require that parents be notified if a student asks about changing their names and pronouns, using different bathrooms or playing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

In March, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sided with a lower federal court decision from the previous year and dismissed the case. The order, written by Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker, stated that while it’s clear parents have genuine concerns, neither the parents nor their children were affected by the policy.

A petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL, and America First Legal asked the justices to determine whether parents have legal standing to challenge “an explicit policy to usurp parental decision making” and to “conceal this from parents.”

WILL and the Eau Claire Area School District could not immediately be reached for comment. Sixteen Republican-led states urged the high court to take up the parents’ case. Alito wrote the dissenting opinion, describing the case as having “great and growing national importance.”

“Whether a public school district violates parents’ ‘fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing of ‘ their children when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process,” Alito wrote. “We are told that more than 1,000 districts have adopted such policies.”

“Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” encourages transgender students to reach out to staff members with concerns and instructs employees to be careful who they talk to about a student’s gender identity, since not all students are “out” to their families.

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