SCOTUS Sides With California Parents In School Transgender Dispute
The Supreme Court on Monday evening granted a request from a group of parents in California to reinstate a ruling by a federal district court prohibiting schools in the state from “misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation.” In addition, the ruling requires schools to follow parents’ instructions regarding the names and pronouns that children use there.
In a detailed seven-page ruling, the majority clarified that the parents were likely to succeed in their argument that California’s policies infringe upon their right to freely practice their religion and their right to guide the upbringing and education of their children.
Two of the court’s left-wing justices, Elena Kagan, joined by Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the court’s ruling, arguing that Monday’s ruling “shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction.”
The dispute originated in 2023, when two teachers filed a lawsuit against the school district seeking an exemption from its policies on gender and pronouns. They were later joined by parents of children who either socially transitioned at school or believed their children had done so.
After the district court ruled in favor of the challengers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit temporarily suspended that ruling while the state appealed the decision. The challengers then escalated the case to the Supreme Court, asking the justices for intervention.
In a nuanced decision on Monday night, the majority ruled in favor of the parents but rejected the teachers’ request. The majority explained that the parents were likely to succeed in their claim that the state’s policies interfere with their religious freedom.
The majority wrote that the policies are subject to the most stringent constitutional test, which is known as strict scrutiny, because “they substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’”
The policies can’t pass that test, the majority noted further, regardless of the state’s claim that the “policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy” because they “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
Moreover, the majority wrote, parents have long had “primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,” including “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
In a seven-page dissenting opinion, Kagan criticized the court’s decision to resolve the case using the interim docket. She claimed that the high court “receive[d] scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute” and then, without having any oral argument, “grant[ed] relief by means of a terse, tonally dismissive ruling designed to conclusively resolve the dispute.”
Kagan further wrote that the court could resolve the issue at the center of this case in “the regular way, on our merits docket.” She pointed out that the court has been revisiting a petition for review in a similar case repeatedly since November.
“Why not, then, just grant” review in that case, she asked, “and decide it this coming fall?”
“Our processes are, in short, the hallmark of judicial probity, and alike its guarantor. There was no reason to abandon them here,” she concluded.
In a four-page concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, addressed and countered Justice Kagan’s criticism.
Barrett argued the majority’s ruling that “the parents are likely to succeed on the merits” is a “preliminary” one. She then said that the interim relief decision “is not a sign of the Court’s ‘impatience’ to reach the merits,” but rather “reflects the Court’s judgment about the risk of irreparable harm to the parents.”
If the 9th Circuit’s order is not lifted, she added, “parents will be excluded—perhaps for years—from participating in consequential decisions about their child’s mental health and wellbeing.”
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
