National Parents’ Day, established by Congress in 1994 and commemorated this year on July 25, was never meant to be a greeting-card observance. It was intended to be a civic reminder: Family is the first and most important institution in a free society. That reminder has never been more important than right now.
For too long, school officials have been treating parents as obstacles to be managed rather than partners to be respected. Schools nationwide are excluding parents from decisions on controversial curriculum and policies involving sex and gender.
Parents have been told they have no right to know what their young children are being taught. They have been denied meaningful opt-outs from instruction that conflicts with their family’s faith. And some districts deliberately keep parents in the dark when their child is assigned to share overnight accommodations with the opposite sex on a school-sponsored trip, or adopts a new “gender identity” with a different name and inaccurate pronouns.
That’s not transparency. It’s state-sponsored secrecy. And the Constitution does not permit it.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children—a right that’s not just a slogan and not a relic of days gone by. It is a constitutional limit on government power. Because parents do not surrender their rights at the schoolhouse door. Public education is not a license for the state to overtake a family’s moral and religious formation.
In 2025, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that principle in a landmark parental rights case. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a diverse group of public-school parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, objected to their young children’s mandatory exposure to certain “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks without notice to parents or meaningful opt-out.
The high court was clear: Our Constitution forbids schools from “substantially interfering” in the religious upbringing of children by indoctrinating them with the state’s views on hotly debated topics like sexuality and gender.
That decision restored a basic truth: Parents are the primary decision-makers regarding their children’s education and upbringing. When schools address sensitive questions about sexuality, gender, and identity, parents have a right to know—and, in some circumstances, to say no.
Then came Mirabelli v. Bonta earlier this year. There, parents are challenging California’s policy requiring educators to conceal a child’s social transition at school unless the child consents. The court sent another clear message: Parents have a constitutional right not to be shut out of consequential decisions in their children’s lives.
Children struggling with identity and mental health shouldn’t be isolated from their families. Vulnerable kids need the encouragement and wisdom of the adults who know and love them best—their parents.
These situations aren’t just hypotheticals of what happens when schools prioritize gender ideology over education. They’re real stories about real families.
A New York school district socially transitioned Jennifer Vitsaxaki’s 12-year-old daughter behind her back and refused to stop when she objected.
A Colorado school district assigned Joe and Serena Wailes’ 11-year-old daughter to share a hotel room with a boy on an overnight school-sponsored trip—without their knowledge or consent.
And in the state of Washington, a 15-year-old female wrestler was sexually assaulted while unknowingly wrestling a male in a girls’ wrestling match. Neither the athlete nor her mother was told that she was being matched against a biological male.
The issue isn’t lodging logistics or inclusivity. It’s whether parents may be denied critical information they need to make informed decisions about their children’s lives.
Students should never be put in these untenable situations. And parents should never be the last to know when school policies create obvious questions about student identity, privacy, and safety.
Keeping secrets from parents hurts kids. And it violates parents’ fundamental rights.
Schools cannot demand parental partnership on homework, attendance, and fundraising while excluding parents from critical decisions about controversial curriculum, gender identity, mental health, safety, and privacy. That’s a double standard that causes substantial harm to families.
When school and parent opinions differ on important matters like gender, sexuality, morals, and faith, the answer is not concealment and parental exclusion. It’s transparency, notice, and choice.
National Parents’ Day should be a reminder to school officials that parents are not optional stakeholders. They’re not second-tier advisors to be consulted only when convenient. They are mothers and fathers—parents who know and love their children and want what’s best for them.
And in America, the Constitution protects their right to act like it.
Sharon Supp is legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) at its Center for Parental Rights.