From left, California Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta
ORANGE COUNTY — California can no longer attempt to enforce a state law prohibiting public schools and teachers and staff from telling parents if their children are secretly transitioning their gender expression at school.
On June 18, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its own prior decisions, agreeing that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling makes clear that California's law actually does violate parents' constitutional rights, as conservatives and parents' rights advocates have argued for years.
In the ruling, the judges said this spring's Supreme Court ruling known as Mirabelli v Bonta reveals that California's law, known as AB 1955, unconstitutionally "forbids the mandatory policies that the Constitution requires."
The ruling came in a lawsuit lodged by the city of Huntington Beach and a group of 10 parents, challenging the AB 1955 law, which California Democratic lawmakers dubbed the SAFETY Act, which is an acronym derived from its full title, the "Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act."
Supporters of the law, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, asserted the law was needed to protect the rights of transgender students by making schools into a place they can feel comfortable questioning their gender and potentially attempting to assume a gender identity at odds with their biological sex, even without the knowledge and consent of their parents.
Huntington Beach took up the fight against the law in 2024 after city officials designated the city as a "Parents' Right to Know City." They and the parents were represented in the case by attorneys from the conservative constitutional advocacy organization, America First Legal.
In their action, Huntington Beach and the parents asserted the SAFETY Act did not protect the safety of children, but rather trampled the constitutional rights of parents under the 14th Amendment to direct the upbringing of their children.
In court, the parents and Huntington Beach were repeatedly rebuffed in Orange County federal district court and then twice by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Each time, the courts ruled the parents and city lacked "standing" under the Constitution to challenge the law. The courts determined the city couldn't sue, because it doesn't run any schools. And judges said the parents also couldn't sue because they couldn't show their children had actually requested to change their names or pronouns at school or otherwise sought school assistance with any gender transition matters.
However, the legal landscape shifted significantly in March 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court took surprise emergency action in a separate case, which centered on similar legal questions, to make clear that state and local governments, including school districts, have no constitutional authority to conceal from parents such information about their children.
The decision favored a group of parents who had also been told by a Ninth Circuit court that they were unlikely to show they were actually harmed by the state's laws and policies, requiring schools to keep parents in the dark on student gender concerns.
In the ruling, the Supreme Court 6-3 majority said California's policies clearly violated parents' 14th Amendment due process rights and their First Amendment religious liberty rights.
"The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy. But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents," the Supreme Court majority wrote in the primary opinion.
"... Under long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to 'the upbringing and education of children,'” the majority wrote.
"The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health."
Following the Mirabelli ruling, the parents and Huntington Beach asked the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its prior rulings in light of the new Supreme Court decision.
While Bonta and his office argued against reconsideration, despite the Mirabelli ruling, this time, the Ninth Circuit judges said the Mirabelli ruling had changed the legal calculus.
The three-judge panel said the Mirabelli ruling makes clear that parents have an "affirmative right" to know information about their children at school, particularly including if they are questioning gender or attempting to transition, either socially or medically.
Further, they said, the Supreme Court decison makes clear that parents don't need to have a child who is transitioning before they can sue to challenge a state law or school policy blocking them from the information they are owed by right.
So, the Ninth Circuit panel said the plaintiffs challenging the SAFETY Act are likely to succeed at striking down the California law as an easy violation of their constitutional rights, as interpreted under Mirabelli.
The Ninth Circuit this time issued an injunction blocking California from enforcing its law.
Following the ruling, Gene Hamilton, president of America FIrst Legal, celebrated the injunction with a post on the X social media platform.
"Gavin Newsom and California don't want parents to know about their own children being 'transitioned' at school," Hamilton said.
"Our clients sued. Enforcement of AB 1955 is preliminarily enjoined because we are likely to prevail on the merits.
"Parents have rights."
The decision was also cheered by the attorneys who had successfully argued the Mirabelli case at the Supreme Court.
In a statement celebrating the injunction, Paul M. Jonna, an attorney with the firm of LiMandri & Jonna and special counsel to religious liberties legal advocacy group, the Thomas More Society, said the decision was a "direct result" of the Mirabelli ruling and should serve notice to Democratic-led states who refuse to change laws similar to AB 1955 that they can expect similar defeats in court.
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision in Mirabelli makes clear that parents cannot be kept in the dark about their own children’s ‘gender identity’ at school," Jonna said. "Every state law that interferes with parental rights in this way violates Mirabelli — and we are very pleased that the Ninth Circuit got this right by declaring AB 1955 unconstitutional."
