Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, many are calling a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling as one of the most important parental rights victories of the 21st century. In an emergency ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the court blocked California schools from purposely keeping from parents when their kids identify as the opposite sex at school. According to plaintiffs, the legal practice of hiding social gender transitions from parents has caused ongoing and irreparable harm to parental rights and to children's well-being, and it needed to be stopped immediately.
For example, in one tragic case, an eighth-grade girl attempted suicide. Only when she was in the hospital did her parents learn from a doctor that she'd been presenting and treated like a boy at school. And these cases exist because back in 2024, the California Department of Education issued guidance to public schools to classify a student's expressed transgender status as private.
So directions were given to schools to respect a student's wish on whom to inform, meaning they could withhold the information from their parents. As a result, parents in California were left in the dark if a school treated their child as a different gender, including using a child's preferred names and pronouns regardless of what the parents wished. And teachers were also forced to comply with the deception of the children's parents.
Now, of course, we also know that teachers, counselors, and school officials were often encouraging students to question their identity. Defending the policy, California Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed, and I quote, for many students, the consequences of compelling the disclosure of confidential information about their gender identity would be irreversible, end quote. Manta must not be familiar with the work of Walt Heyer or the results of the CAS review or the comprehensive studies that have been published over the past two years by the Department of Health and Human Services or the testimonies of a growing number of young people who have detransitioned, like Chloe Cole, all of which document the devastating and actually irreversible consequences of pursuing such so-called sex changes. The New York Times also ignored all this research with its headline, and I quote, Supreme Court sides with religious parents, blocking California's trans student policy.
Now, of course, the court's decision was a victory for all parents, not just religious ones, and it affirmed the ruling from a lower federal court in California, which held that the 14th Amendment's due process clause states that parents and not the state are the ones with the primary authority with respect to the upbringing and education of children. With regards to religious parents, the High Court ruled that parents have a religious right to raise children in accordance with their beliefs, and that includes areas involving sex and gender. They cited the Free exercise clause. Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh also made this interesting joint statement, and I quote: when rights are unstated, how do judges know what they are?
Well, the court has crafted a demanding task for recognizing unexpressed rights. They must be deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, end quote.
So, while many Christians would have appreciated a defense of parental rights that was based on scripture or even natural law, this statement established parental rights as a deep-seated right in our nation's history, one that's worth protecting and preserving. Also, the worldview implications of this decision are massive. There are currently as many as 40 other cases on the very same topic that are working through the federal courts right now. That the Supreme Court is being asked to make a final decision about what is obvious about human beings. is sad, but we certainly want them to make the right decision.
Another interesting facet of the case was that the more progressive justices on the court, Kagan, Jackson, Sota Mayor, held dissenting but not unanimous views. Kagan and Jackson seemed to agree with the majority that the parents were likely going to win the case in the end, but they disagreed with the court's need for emergency action.
Soda Mayor's absence from the other two liberal justices suggests that she may disagree with that interpretation. Deuteronomy 6 clearly describes the sacred responsibility that parents have to teach their children the commands of God. This authority that parents have over their children is a sphere that the state cannot and should not contravene. We can be grateful for this ruling that recognizes this and pray that similar decisions in the future will continue to push back on a worldview that denies the realities of God's created order. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org. Applications for the 2026-2027 Colson Fellows class are now open. Join with like-minded Christians for a deep dive study of Christian worldview and its answers to our culture's hardest questions.
Come away after your months of study with a deeper, more equipped faith for our cultural moment. Listen to Colleen, a 2025 Commissioned Fellow from Atlanta, share how the Colson Fellows program showed her that Christianity had answers to her questions and doubts. I know I had stepped away from my faith for a while because I didn't really feel like Christianity really grappled with. ideas and tried to understand why their perspective was true. And so I had stepped away from it for a while because I just got really tired of, well, it's true because it is, you know, the circular reasoning.
And so being able to like have this foundation is something that I really didn't have growing up in the church. and I'm really grateful for it. If you're ready to deepen your understanding of your faith and its connection to every part of your life, you can request more information about the Colson Fellows Program at colsonfellows.org. That's colsonfellows.org.
