Labrador Letter – Fighting for Parental Rights

Dear Friends,

Every parent knows that raising a child means making difficult decisions. You teach them how to cross the street, who to trust, what values to live by, and how to navigate an increasingly complicated world. Parents carry that responsibility every day. That authority and relationship do not disappear when a child walks into a public school, crosses a state line, or if a child disagrees with a parent. It certainly does not disappear because someone in government believes that the state knows what is best for that child.

This is the core principle behind two cases where I have recently led coalitions of states in defending the constitutional rights of parents against ideological zealotry.  Both these cases are happening in our backyard and with the real chance that Idaho children and families can be harmed as a result.

The first is Mirabelli v. Bonta, where a junior high school treated a girl as a boy for most of a year and kept it from her parents, who found out only after she attempted suicide. The parents moved her to another public school and specifically asked to be told if it happened again, and the district refused, pointing to state policy. The State of California lost this case at the district court level, but has appealed it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – the same appellate court whose decisions Idaho is bound to.  California is fighting to keep this misguided policy, and unfortunately, more than 1,200 school districts nationwide have adopted similar rules, covering roughly 12.3 million students.  

My office led a 17-state coalition urging the Ninth Circuit to leave in place a lower court ruling against California, and our argument is straightforward. A school does not become the parent by spending six hours a day with a child. The U.S. Supreme Court has already held that parents make judgment calls about a child’s care and treatment, and that a child’s disagreement with a parent does not move that authority to a government office. Children struggling with their identity deserve compassion and competent mental health care. What they do not need is a school putting distance between them and the people who love them most.

The second case, International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, challenges a 2023 Washington law which allows a shelter to conceal the presence of any runaway child if that child asks for gender transition treatment. The shelter can coordinate the medical procedures and decide not to contact the parents at all. Parents may never learn where their child is or if they are safe. Washington defines those procedures to include mastectomies, breast implants, and facial surgery, and once those procedures begin, state law limits what parents can see in their child’s records.

Several Washington families sued over that law, and they lost before they ever got to argue it. The Ninth Circuit ruled these parents didn’t even have standing – before any discussion of the actual issues at hand.  The court ruled the parents had not been injured in a way the court recognized, treating their fear of a child running away and being subjected to gender-transition surgeries as something parents caused themselves. The potential harm to the runaway children was too far off to matter to the court.

Even though this is Washington law, it can still reach an Idaho family. The state line is a short drive from Coeur d’Alene, Moscow, or Lewiston and a runaway child who crosses it is inside Washington’s system from the moment they arrive. Idaho parents would have no idea where their child is, and there is nothing in Idaho law that could make anyone in Washington pick up the phone.

This ruling matters to us for a second reason. Idaho and Washington sit in the same federal appeals court, so the standing rule applied by the Ninth Circuit applies in the courts where an Idaho parent files a similar case. An Idaho mother and father could be turned away before a judge ever hears what happened to their child. My office joined with Florida to lead a 22-state coalition asking the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.

Government certainly has an important responsibility to protect children from abuse and neglect. But protecting children is not the same thing as assuming the role of their parents. A school, a government agency, or a state official, or a non-profit may disagree with a parent’s decision. But that disagreement alone does not transfer the parent’s constitutional authority to anyone else.
   
The principle underneath both cases is the same. The responsibility of a parent to raise a child is not granted by a court or legislature. Government recognizes that parental authority. It does not grant it out, and it does not get to suspend it because a government official disagrees with how a family is handling a hard situation, or if an official is pursuing a social agenda.

As Idaho’s Attorney General, my office has a responsibility to defend the constitutional guardrails that protect Idaho families—even if that threat to those rights comes from beyond our state borders. Ignoring these risks or allowing them to spread is unacceptable.  We need not wait for rules written for parents in Seattle or San Diego to be tried on parents in Idaho. The courts must resolve this issue sooner rather than later.

Best regards,

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