Supreme Court Takes Up Case Challenging Laws That Treat ‘Non-Affirming Parents’ as Child Abusers

Can Washington state remove parental rights to enable runaway kids to access experimental transgender medical “treatments” without their parents’ knowledge or consent? The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would take up a case on this pivotal issue.

In the case, a group of parents represented by International Partners for Ethical Care is challenging the administration of Gov. Bob Ferguson, D-Wash., as it seeks to implement laws that treat parents who refuse to “affirm” their children’s stated gender identity as akin to child abusers.

Whenever a youth shelter receives a runaway child, state law requires the shelter to contact the parents within 72 hours, giving parents the location of their child, a description of their child’s physical and emotional condition, and why the child contacted the shelter. Washington law includes one exception: “compelling reasons” not to notify the parent such as cases of “abuse or neglect.”

Yet in 2023, Washington’s Legislature passed two laws expanding those “compelling reasons” to include access to “gender-affirming care,” a euphemistic term for experimental medical interventions to make men appear female or vice versa. Advocates of these “treatments” say people who suffer from gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent condition of identifying with a gender opposite your biological sex) will commit suicide without them. Yet the Department of Health and Human Services released a peer-reviewed report finding that there is “extremely weak evidence” for any concrete benefits and a great deal of evidence for harm from these interventions.

Washington parents sued, claiming that the state had “passed laws that deliberately target certain parents by supplanting them with the state in the context of gender-confused runaway minors.”

The parents claim that, under the new laws, if a child runs away seeking “gender-affirming treatment,” the shelter will refer the child for such interventions without parental notice or consent, the shelter will keep parents in the dark about the child’s location and condition, and reunification with the parents will be delayed—at the government’s discretion.

These policies violate parents’ fundamental rights under the Constitution, the lawsuit states.

The laws allegedly harm parents by denying their right to consent or refuse their children’s treatment; denying or delaying notice to parents; withholding information about their child’s location from parents; and delaying a child’s return to his or her parents.

‘Protecting’ Kids From Their Own Parents

Lower courts dismissed the lawsuit, finding that parents lacked standing to bring the challenge in court. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that they lacked standing because the undermining of parental rights came about through a “self-inflicted injury,” because the laws do not directly regulate the parents’ speech, and because standing due to probable harm requires immediate injury, and the court found no injury to the parents.

The 9th Circuit refused to grant the parents a rehearing before the full court, but Judge Eric Tung, an appointee of President Donald Trump, dissented.

“In the legislature’s view, a child suffering from gender dysphoria must be ‘protected’ from parents who do not seek ‘gender-affirming treatment’ for their child and do not ‘affirm the child’s gender identity,” Tung wrote. Washington law “thus places parents who wish to raise their child in accordance with the child’s biological sex in the same category as parents who are abusive or neglectful.”

The parents asked the Supreme Court to reconsider, and the court took up the case Monday.

‘Hostility From Their Family’

In their Supreme Court petition, parents cited Washington legislators, such as State Sen. Marko Liias, who stated their intention to prioritize “gender-affirming care” above parental rights.

Liias stated that the bill addresses “when a young person is … seeking gender-affirming care in the face of opposition and hostility from their family.”

“In those cases where that reunification process would separate that vulnerable young person from the health care that they’re entitled to, … when a family is standing between their young person and essential health care services, we need to focus on the essential needs of a young person—ensure they’re getting the care they deserve.”

The case, International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, considers “whether parents have standing to challenge a law or policy that deliberately displaces their decisionmaking role as to ‘gender transitions’ of their children, and in doing so creates present and likely future impediments to their ability to parent their children as they deem best for them.”

The Supreme Court has upheld parental rights in recent cases. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the court upheld Maryland parents’ right to opt out of a school LGBTQ program, while in Mirabelli v. Bonta (2026), it upheld an injunction protecting parents from a policy hiding childrens’ stated gender identities from parents.