California law that forbids 'forced outing' of trans students blocked by 9th Circuit

Sonja Sharp, Los Angeles Times on Jun 22, 2026

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California's effort to shield the decisions of transgender students in public schools from the eyes of prying parents remains on hold this week after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found a state law designed to protect them was likely unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court previously upheld a temporary block on the law after it was challenged, sending the case back to the appellate court. The 9th Circuit's ruling Thursday kept the block in place, saying the state cannot enforce the measure while the court battle over its legality continues.

Passed in 2024, the California law known as Assembly Bill 1955 was intended to prevent school employees from notifying parents about a student's gender expression without their consent. Boosters of the law say it protects vulnerable students from "forced outing" to families who may be hostile to their trans and nonbinary children. Opponents say it compels schools to "mislead" parents about their children and leaves them "shut out" of critical decisions.

The 9th Circuit had previously allowed the law to stand while the state fought an injunction from a district court in Santa Ana.

Legal experts said the appellate court's latest decision appeared to expand "parental rights" — a move with potentially significant implications for all U.S. families, including the roughly 72.5 million American children who are not transgender.

Mary Ziegler, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and an expert on American parental rights laws, said the ruling was "arguably significantly more extensive than the Supreme Court has spelled out."

"Trans issues are hot-button issues ... but this kind of parental rights litigation has much broader ambitions, some of which have nothing to do with LGBTQ people," she said. "There's an ambition to transform parental rights period, and the easiest way to do that is to focus on trans issues."

Quoting extensively from the related March Supreme Court decision, the 9th Circuit panel found that parents "have an affirmative constitutional right" to be told if their children swap names or pronouns, change how they dress or otherwise alter their gender expression at school.

The panel of appellate judges said they heard no arguments that the California families who brought the challenge "are 'unfit parents' who present a risk of abuse if they are provided with information about their children exhibiting symptoms of gender dysphoria."

Conservatives, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, have criticized the California law for meddling in the affairs of families.

"Under California's policy, parents will be excluded — perhaps for years — from participating in consequential decisions about their child's mental health and wellbeing," Barrett wrote in a concurrence to the Supreme Court's decision in March. "Thus, the parents are likely to suffer irreparable harm if California enforces its policy while this litigation winds its way through the courts."

The court's liberal justices disagreed, finding the decision premature.

"I have no doubt that parents have rights, even though unenumerated, concerning their children and the life choices they make," Justice Elena Kagen wrote in her dissent. "California's policy, in depriving all parents of information critical to their children's health and well-being, could have crossed the constitutional line."

There are multiple similar suits currently en route to the high court, each challenging local or state policies that prevent schools from disclosing certain information about children's gender identity and expression to their parents. Many, including the two related California cases, are championed by conservative legal activists expressly in the name of parents' rights.

Thursday's 9th Circuit ruling was a "major victory," said America First Legal, an advocacy organization co-founded by senior White House aide Stephen Miller, which helped argue the case.

The Supreme Court's decision emerged from a suit brought on behalf of two California teachers by the Thomas More Society, a conservative public interest firm named for the 16th century Catholic saint.

Ziegler and other experts warned a future decision could echo through the legal landscape, transforming how courts approach issues as disparate as school vaccine mandates and whether parental discipline warrants the intervention of state child protective services.

"Reasonable people can disagree about what involvement parents should or shouldn't have in this context," Ziegler said of the California trans rights law. "But that's not what this is about. It's about this complete overhaul of the power parents have. And children are vanishing from the story."