The Supreme Court has an opportunity this term to upend secret gender transition policies in over a thousand school districts.

Despite President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for suspending funds for schools that continue to keep parents in the dark and facilitate “social” transitions, many districts aren’t backing down.

Several parents urging the Supreme Court to hear their cases could force lasting change if the justices decide to clarify the law surrounding parental rights.

“The issue of school secrecy policies is not only not going away, it promises to be an even bigger problem this year,” Defending Education Vice President and Legal Fellow Sarah Parshall Perry told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, parents in several districts shared questionnaires teachers gave kids asking for preferred pronouns when the 2025-2026 school year started.

In Southern California, one lawyer informed school board members during an August meeting that students have a right to privacy even from their parents, advising them to ignore Trump’s executive orders.

Trump directed agencies to rescind federal funds from schools that “directly or indirectly support or subsidize the social transition of a minor student, including through school staff or teachers or through deliberately concealing the minor’s social transition from the minor’s parents” in a January executive order.

The U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into California for state law prohibiting school officials from disclosing a child’s “gender identity” to parents, alleging this conflicts with obligations to inform parents under Family Educational Rights Privacy Act.

In California’s Santa Ana Unified School District, a current presentation teaching staff how to implement “Identity Support Plans” directs school officials to determine if the student is “out” with family members at home, according to slides obtained by the DCNF.

“Discuss how the student wants to be addressed when family members come to the school for pick up, conferences, IEP meetings, etc,” the presentation by the district’s LGBTQ+ liaison states.

Attorney Sarah L.W. Sutherland, the board’s legal counsel, suggested during an SAUSD board meeting that schools should avoid creating documents that could be subject to disclosure.

Following California law that restricts discrimination based on gender identity over executive order exposes them to less legal risk, as enforcing the executive order is “very difficult,” Sutherland told the school board.

“If a student over 12 specifically says don’t share that information, then one of the things is, that then we’re not going to create a record,” Sutherland said in an Aug. 12 presentation.

“Because the right of parents is to records … the other part of FERPA is privacy.”

“Parents are being deceived on many levels in [California] public education,” Santa Ana Unified School District board member Brenda Lebsack told the DCNF.

“We have primary books teaching 5 year olds their gender can change like the weather based on their feelings and if these teachings confuse them into gender fluidity school personnel cannot tell parents unless the child gives them permission. This is upside down, wrong, and a huge betrayal of public trust.”

Petitions to review at least three cases related to secret gender transition policies will reach the Supreme Court this term, Perry told the DCNF.

“More than 12 million children attend schools in a district with express policies that dictate a child’s gender identity information must be hidden from his or her parents under the guise of being required by federal privacy laws,” Perry continued.

“Not only is such a position legally inaccurate, it contradicts more than 100 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence determining that parents have a right to direct the education of their children.”

January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, whose 13-year-old daughter was socially transitioned in a Florida school district without their knowledge, asked the Supreme Court to take their case in September.

“When the Littlejohns found out and asked the school to stop, the school refused,” their petition states.

“When the Littlejohns asked to participate, the school said they had no right. And when the Littlejohns asked for records of the meetings with their daughter, the school said those records were private.”

Massachusetts parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, whose daughter was socially transitioned in school behind their backs, also asked the Supreme Court in July to address the “urgent” question their case presents: whether non-religious parents who oppose gender ideology have a right to object.

Despite parents informing the school that they hired a private therapist to help their daughter, officials secretly encouraged her to adopt a “genderqueer” identity and used male name.

One teacher who finally disclosed what was happening to the parents was fired, according to the petition.

“More than 1,000 public school districts have adopted secret transition policies, resulting in dozens of lawsuits and harming countless children,” their petition states.

Twenty-one states, along with Guam, filed a brief backing Foote and Silvestri, writing that the Ludlow School Committee’s actions “violated the constitutionally sacrosanct parent-child relationship.”

“Our hope is that the court broadly protects parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education and health care,” Vincent Wagner, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Parental Rights, told the DCNF.

If the Supreme Court agrees, it could have a broad effect on secret transition policies nationwide, Wagner said.

Several justices have already indicated interest in considering the issue.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas previously wanted to accept a challenge brought by Wisconsin parents concerned about their district’s policy, but the petition was denied in December by the other six justices.

Alito, in a dissent joined by Thomas, noted the case presented “a question of great and growing national importance.”

The school districts’ defiance of Trump’s executive order reveals the depth of ideological commitment to gender transition policies.

Legal advisors telling schools to ignore federal directives demonstrates coordinated resistance to parental rights restoration.

The systematic concealment of children’s gender transitions represents one of the most serious breaches of parental authority in American education history.

Over 12 million children attend schools with policies designed to hide crucial information from their parents.

The Supreme Court cases present the clearest path to ending this educational overreach and restoring constitutional parental rights.

School officials firing teachers who inform parents shows how far districts will go to maintain secrecy.

The involvement of 21 states supporting parental rights demonstrates broad recognition of this constitutional crisis.

These policies effectively make the state, not parents, the ultimate authority over children’s psychological development.

The refusal to create records to avoid disclosure requirements shows conscious effort to circumvent parental oversight.

Trump’s executive order provides the legal framework, but only Supreme Court action can create lasting nationwide change.

The cases involve clear violations of established constitutional principles protecting parental authority.

School districts’ resistance to federal oversight reveals how deeply gender ideology has penetrated educational institutions.

The Supreme Court’s decision could determine whether parents retain fundamental rights over their children’s upbringing.