On June 15, Ann Ciccarelli, president of the Board of Education for the School District of the Chathams, New Jersey, read a statement into the record. The Supreme Court's decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, she said, "is not binding on public school districts in New Jersey." She pointed to state guidance instead. The policy at issue lets staff decide whether a student's parents hear about a social transition.
I've spent three decades advising clients on what the law demands of people who hold a fiduciary duty on someone else's behalf. A trustee who told a beneficiary that a Supreme Court fiduciary ruling didn't bind him because his state regulator saw it differently wouldn't survive a deposition. Ms. Ciccarelli made the same argument. Only the asset is someone else's child, not someone else's money.
Chatham, NJ's Policy 5145.7 tracks New Jersey guidance. It lets staff use a student's chosen name and pronouns, keep a transition confidential, and refer the student to outside advocacy groups, all without requiring notice to parents. The complaint adds that it provides access to facilities and sports based on gender identity. In August, Moms for Liberty sued in federal court, represented by the Thomas More Society, which prevailed in the Mirabelli case. The complaint says the policy defaults to non-disclosure: a counselor "will assess whether, and to what extent, parents/guardians can be involved." It invokes the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
On March 2, in an emergency order, the Court reinstated an injunction for the plaintiff parents against California policies that barred schools from telling them about a child's gender transition without the child's consent. The Court found the parents likely to succeed on Free Exercise and Due Process claims. Liberal Justices Kagan and Jackson dissented, and Justice Sotomayor would have denied relief altogether.
Ms. Ciccarelli has a technical point. An emergency order isn't a final judgment, and Chatham wasn't a party. But the board is betting the Court's reasoning stops at the California line. It doesn't. Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923 struck down a ban on teaching young children a foreign language, and Pierce v. Society of Sisters in 1925 struck down Oregon's mandate that children attend public school. In Troxel v. Granville in 2000, a plurality called the right to direct a child's upbringing "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests." Last year, Mahmoud v. Taylor ruled that Maryland parents were likely entitled to opt their elementary-school children out of LGBTQ-themed storybooks. New Jersey's antidiscrimination statute is real law, and Chatham's lawyers are free to argue it survives scrutiny. What it can't do is outrank the Constitution.
New Jersey's recent history explains the board's confidence. Starting in 2023, four districts (Hanover, Marlboro, Middletown and Manalapan-Englishtown) adopted policies requiring parents to be notified when a student sought a gender-identity accommodation. Attorney General Matthew Platkin sued them under state anti-discrimination law, and in February 2025 an appellate panel upheld injunctions blocking the policies. Those injunctions were temporary and rested on state law. Three days after that ruling, Middletown's board voted to rescind its Policy 5756, saying every parent in the district would "remain actively involved in their child's education." Mirabelli and Mahmoud rest on the federal Constitution, which outranks a state statute every day of the week.
Set the case law aside for a moment. Society rests on the family because it's the only institution built to pass character, judgment and love from one generation to the next. I've coached youth sports for years, and I know where a coach's usefulness ends. I can teach a 15-year-old to run, pass and block. I can't form his conscience, and neither can a guidance counselor, however well-intentioned. A policy that routes a child's identity questions through school staff while keeping the parents in the dark has already decided who raises that child.
Safety concerns deserve serious treatment. Some children may face rejection at home, and a district that ignored real danger to a specific child would deserve criticism. But the complaint describes concealment as the default and disclosure as the exception, at a staff member's discretion. Flip it. Require notice, with a narrow, documented exception for genuine danger. The rare child who needs protection still gets it, and every other family stops hearing that the school knows their child better than they do.
The Chatham case will take months, and I won't predict a federal judge's docket. But districts that keep betting against this reasoning are gambling with taxpayers' money. The larger point outlasts the litigation. When an institution decides it can manage a child's most personal questions better than the people who raised him, it has mistaken itself for the family it was supposed to serve. A school should teach reading, writing and arithmetic. No policy memo will ever earn the job of parent.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.
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