The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a significant blow to transgender students in California , allowing parents challenging the state’s school gender identity policies to enforce a lower court injunction that restricts student confidentiality while the case moves forward on appeal. Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ + news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter. In an 18-page unsigned opinion in Mirabelli v. Bonta , the court vacated a Ninth Circuit order that had blocked a district court ruling against California officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta. The justices concluded that parents objecting on religious grounds are "likely to succeed on the merits" of their claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Related : Conservative Californians ask SCOTUS to allow forced outing of transgender students Related : In a major win for trans students, New Jersey court rules against forced outing policies The case centers on California guidance prohibiting school staff from telling parents if a student socially transitions at school, meaning they are adopting a different name or pronouns, without the student’s consent. State officials say the policy shields students who may face rejection or harm at home. Opponents argue it unlawfully cuts parents out of consequential decisions about their children’s mental health and upbringing. The policies at the heart of the dispute stem from Assembly Bill 1955, signed into law in 2024, which was designed to protect transgender and gender-nonconforming youth by prohibiting schools from requiring educators to disclose a student’s gender identity or pronouns to parents without the student’s consent. Critics have labeled it “forced outing.” According to a recent GLAAD fact sheet, such policies “run contrary to research showing transgender youth are at risk of extreme and harmful consequences of outing students to nonaffirming environments,” particularly when youth face familial rejection or violence after disclosure. Supporters of the law argue that such protections are lifesaving for youth who might face rejection, abuse, or homelessness if their gender identity were disclosed to unsupportive families. California officials have repeatedly insisted that parents retain the right to request access to education records under federal law, but that the state’s nondisclosure law simply prevents compelled disclosure against a student’s wishes. Related : Trump uses State of the Union to demonize transgender kids and their families Related : Trump exploits Supreme Court ruling to attack transgender people in reality-challenged White House briefing For LGBTQ+ advocates, the ruling revives a painful historical throughline. The Los Angeles LGBT Center has traced today’s “forced outing” efforts to earlier campaigns targeting LGBTQ+ people in schools, from 1978’s failed Proposition 6, which sought to remove gay teachers under the banner of “parental rights,” to attempts in the 1990s and 2000s to require parental consent for students to join Gay-Straight Alliances, effectively outing them. Advocates argue that such policies have long been used to sideline queer youth under the rhetoric of family control, even as schools became, for many students, the only affirming space in their lives. But in his district court ruling later embraced by the Supreme Court, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez held that California’s policy erects an unconstitutional barrier between parents and children, granting parents a right to be informed about their children’s gender identity. After the Ninth Circuit put that injunction on hold, the Supreme Court’s action restored it for the time being, curtailing the state’s nondisclosure protections as applied to parents who object to them. The majority cast the dispute as a straightforward question of parental authority. California's policies, the court wrote, likely "substantially interfere with the right of parents to guide the religious development of their children," triggering strict scrutiny. The justices also signaled that parents are likely to prevail under longstanding substantive due process precedent recognizing a right to direct children’s upbringing and education . Related : California sues Trump admin over its demand to forcibly out trans students, obtains restraining order The decision drew a sharp dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan warned that the ruling illustrates "how our emergency docket can malfunction," accusing the majority of resolving "novel legal questions and arousing strong views" without full briefing, oral argument, or ordinary deliberation. She also criticized the court for acting while the Ninth Circuit was still considering the issue through its en banc process, writing that "regular order counsels" deferring to the lower court first. The majority, she said, was "impatient" in pressing forward despite "thorny legal issues" that warrant fuller consideration. Kagan further flagged the doctrinal tension underlying the ruling. The court’s reliance on substantive due process to establish a parental right, she wrote, sits uneasily alongside recent decisions curtailing unenumerated rights, a contrast that "cannot but induce a strong sense of whiplash" when compared with the court's repudiation of abortion rights in Dobbs . "The Court resolves the issues raised through shortcut procedures on the emergency docket even though it has had—for months now—the option of doing so the regular way, on our merits docket," she added. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote separately to defend the court's intervention, arguing that existing parental rights precedent controls and that withholding interim relief would risk irreparable harm to parents excluded from "highly important decisions about their child's mental health."