Summary of facts: Public school officials attempted to “transition” the plaintiffs’ 13-year-old daughter from female to male without their knowledge or consent. The parents sued the school for violating their fundamental parental rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Over a strong dissent, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the parents could not prevail because the conduct of the school officials did not “shock the conscience.” This standard, the majority of the panel held, applies to challenges that violate “executive actions” but not “legislative actions.” The dissenting judge called the majority’s decision “totally bizarre.” The parents are now asking the full Eleventh Circuit to rehear the case en banc, arguing that plaintiffs do not need to demonstrate that government officials’ conduct “shocked the conscience” to vindicate their constitutional rights.

RFI’s position: Since the founding of America, a fundamental aspect of parental rights has been the ability to guide the moral and spiritual upbringing of one’s children, including beliefs about human nature and teachings from holy texts. And history shows no principled basis to distinguish between executive and legislative intrusions upon fundamental rights, let alone that an infringement of parental rights must “shock the conscience” to be legally recognized. Whatever the test, a government act that usurps parental authority to secretly indoctrinate a child about gender, sexuality, and how God created her is an assault on what the Founders recognized as sacred rights protected by the Constitution that are essential to a free society.

Read the brief here.