Parents and teachers who oppose the state policies sued, claiming their parental, free speech and religious rights were violated.
The Supreme Court on Monday barred California from enforcing state rules that restrict when schools can notify parents about students who come out as transgender and requires teachers to use children’s preferred pronouns.
The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, allowed a federal judge’s ruling in favor of parents who oppose the policy on religious grounds to go into effect. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had put the judge’s decision on hold pending further litigation.
The court’s ruling focused on the parents’ claim that their rights under the free exercise clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment were violated. The court also said they have valid parental rights claims under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
That is very troubling. I could have understood a First Amendment justification for the school and the staff, although they have to live with restrictions on what they say all the time.
Basing this on the parents’ free exercise clause means that the parents have a religious right to know the details of their children’s lives, which implies they have a right to force their religion on their children.
That is a monstrous claim, as children have a right to their own religion and exercise thereof under the First Amendment, too.
Alito has pretty consistently implied that he believes religious freedom gives christians the right to impose their religion on others. Or that other people don’t things that christians disagree with is somehow infringing on their religious freedom.
And Thomas is just a piece of shit who has explicitly said he just wants to make liberals miserable. I don’t even think all the bribes actually influence his decisions, he would’ve been this terrible for free.
I agree, and they have more or less always been that way. If you wanted to shrink the reach of religion, you brought a case about the rights of Muslims or Native Americans. If you wanted to expand it, you brought a case about Catholicism.
I think what changed is that they were more roundabout about it and they tried to find some reasoning that got them where they wanted but not for the reasons they wanted. Sort of like the decision to let the baker discriminate, which was formally decided on the grounds that the State of Colorado discriminated against his religiosity.
Conservatives view children as property. It shouldn’t be that surprising of a ruling; its why they love pedophilia.
Rights are essentially the mirror image of duties: the right not to be killed corresponds to the duty not to murder; the right to privacy corresponds to the duty not to intrude on people’s privacy; the right to free expression corresponds to the duty not to prevent that expression.
If parents have a right to know about the child’s transgender identity, who has the corresponding duty? The implication of this line of argument is that, at the very least, schools ought to snitch on anything a child does that the parent might want to know for religious reasons, whatever they may be.
If we take the duty as primary, we can flip it and ask what right corresponds to the duty of schools to tell parents about their child’s transgender identity, in case it’s something narrower. Sometimes a duty merely creates the right to expect that a public body behaves in an appropriate way. But that is then not in the least bit a religious matter but a civil one.
How does blocking a law that forbids schools from telling parents information about their children violate the child’s first amendment rights?
See, that’s what makes SCOTUS’s argument so insidious. If the right to be notified is religious in nature, then the conflict with the child that doesn’t want to tell the parents also is religious in nature. In particular, the child asserts the freedom to be free from the parents’ religion.
If the decision were based on the free speech rights of the school, or on concern for the well-being of the child, I could have understood. But basing it on the religious rights of the parents is in direct contradiction with the fact that the child clearly doesn’t want their parents to know, which means the child is aware the parents would disapprove for religious reasons, which means the child does not share that particular religious belief.
Did they say the right to be notified was religious in nature? Is this even about a “right to be notified”?
It looks like this simply allows faculty to inform parents of their child’s transgender status, not requiring them to do it.
From the post body:
So, yes, it is a religious issue. And I would have totally bought a framing that says the law infringes on the teachers’ rights or those of staff to notify the parents. I don’t know why they would frame it as the parents’ right. I suppose it’s because they couldn’t find school personnel willing to go to court over this.
I totally get your point, and you are right. But the court went out of its way to frame is as the parents’ right based on exercise of religion, which seems bonkers to me.
I suppose the post body might be wrong, too.