US Supreme Court rejects school gender-identity policy challenge

The U.S. Supreme Court, turning away another case involving transgender issues, declined on Monday to hear a bid to revive a lawsuit against a public school district in Wisconsin over a policy to support gender identity of students that some parents challenged on religious rights and other grounds.

The Supreme Court rebuffed an appeal by a group of parents of students in the Eau Claire Area School District, backed by two conservative legal groups, of a lower court's ruling that they lacked the necessary legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the court's decision to deny the appeal.

The Wisconsin lawsuit is one of many legal disputes concerning transgender people playing out across the United States, including which bathroom facilities they may use and which sports teams they may join.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, on Dec. 4 heard a major case concerning transgender rights, appearing inclined to uphold a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youth in a challenge to the law by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration.

The Eau Claire school district adopted a policy that allows students to change their name and preferred pronouns and use the bathroom that matches their gender identity without parental notice or consent.

The lawsuit, filed by the conservative legal groups America First Legal and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, was brought in 2022 by a group called Parents Protecting Our Children. The plaintiffs said the district's policy violates the rights of the parents to religious freedom under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and due process under the 14th Amendment.

Most of the group's members hold religious beliefs that "there are only two sexes" and "would not immediately 'affirm' whatever beliefs their children might have about their gender," the lawsuit stated.

The school district said the challengers have "grossly" mischaracterized its policies aimed at providing an inclusive school environment, and that any plan made to address the needs of transgender, nonbinary or gender non-conforming students is available to parents in the student's school file.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker found that the challengers did not experience a legal injury themselves and therefore lacked the legal standing to sue. None claimed that their child is transgender or that the district had applied the policy to their child, the judge found. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in March.

The case "presents a question of great and growing national importance," Alito wrote in brief dissent, joined by Thomas.

Alito said he was "concerned that some federal courts" are using the doctrine of standing "as a way of avoiding some particularly contentious constitutional questions."