On December 22, 2025, in Mirabelli v. Olson, a federal trial court judge in California, Roger Benitez, handed parents a big Christmas present in upholding their rights to be informed when their minor children transition socially at school. Benitez’s well-reasoned fifty-two page opinion invalidated a school policy based on California’s Parental Exclusion Policies requiring educators to hide the gender identities or social transitioning status of minors from their parents. In a separate four-page order Benitez permanently enjoined the statewide enforcement of California’s policies; state officials appealed almost immediately.

Mirabelli v. Olson

Litigation ensued in Mirabelli when two Christian middle school teachers in the Escondido Union School District, joined by other educators and parents, challenged the board’s policy. The policy forbade teachers from notifying parents whose children, as young as fifth grade, adopted gender identities and/or used pronouns different from their birth sexes unless the students agreed to such disclosures.

In the opening paragraph of his opinion, Benitez quoted the Supreme Court’s declaration that “[i]t is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.” Benitez’s second paragraph posed four questions starting with whether the nondisclosure-secrecy policy violated both the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to information about their children and their First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.

Turning to the teachers, Benitez asked if they could provide gender information to parents under the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. He also questioned whether teachers had the right to communicate accurate gender information to parents under the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

Benitez answered that “[i]n each case, this Court concludes that, as a matter of law, the answer is ‘yes.’” Benitez began his analysis by commenting that “[t]he Supreme Court has long recognized ‘the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.’” He thus first invalidated the policy as violating the parents’ rights to participate in important matters in the lives of their children.

Second, Benitez addressed the parents’ First Amendment religion rights under the Supreme Court’s June 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor. In Mahmoud the Justices upheld the rights of an inter-faith coalition of parents in Maryland to opt their children, some as young as three, out of explicit sex education instruction involving LGBTQ+ characters and themes as transgressing their free exercise rights because the materials were inconsistent with their faiths. By hiding important information about their children, Benitez held that educators contravened their religious rights to raise their young in a manner consistent with their faiths.

Third, Benitez vitiated the policy for violating the teachers’ free exercise rights because if they complied, they faced an “unlawful choice between sacrificing their faith and sacrificing their teaching position[s]” because they could have been fired for speaking to parents about their children. Fourth, Benitez ruled that obligating teachers to obey the policy violated their First Amendment free speech rights because it would have compelled them either to not inform parents about the status of their children or deliberately convey an illegal message when responding honestly to inquiries.

In language worth repeating in full enjoining the policy’s enforcement, Benitez separately ordered California officials to post the following statement state-wide within twenty-days noting that  

“Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence. Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence. These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary."

Whose Values Will Prevail?

Early in his opinion, in his only reference to it, Judge Benitez cited 1925’s Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court’s earliest and arguably most significant case on parental rights, wherein it first explicitly acknowledged their rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children. Affirming the right of non-public schools to operate, the Pierce Court emphasized that “[t]he child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

At its heart, Mirabelli is a clash over whose values will prevail. In other words, will parents retain their God-given fundamental right in effect since time immemorial to direct the education and upbringing of their children in accordance with their religious values and beliefs or will they be forced to defer to the seemingly ever-changing dictates du jour of public officials in a dystopian turn of events. In Mirabelli, then, it is perplexing why state and local educational officials sought to trammel parental rights by refusing to inform them about what was happening with their young children on such an important matter as their emerging, albeit confused, awareness of their sexuality.

Equally troubling in Mirabelli is how state and local educational officials, following the directive promulgated by the state attorney general, sought to enforce a policy that flies in the face of clear one-hundred-year-old Supreme Court precedent starting in Pierce defining the substantive due process rights of parents as the primary caregivers of their children. In light of the unequivocal guidance on parental rights the Supreme Court reaffirmed earlier this year in Mahmoud, it is puzzling that public officials, whether legislators, the attorney general, in the state department of education, and/or local school boards, would exclude parents helping their children deal with such a significant matter as uncertainty over their genders. 

The board’s policy ran roughshod over the free exercise rights of parents by interfering in their ability to raise their children in accord with their religious beliefs. The board simultaneously infringed on the teachers’ religious rights by forcing them to choose between following a directive inconsistent with their own faiths at the risk of losing their jobs while restricting their free speech rights if they commented honestly to parents about what students were experiencing.

Children undergoing gender dysphoria certainly need care, compassion, respect, and guidance, especially from their parents. Yet, it hardly seems caring or compassionate to allow youngsters to live what amounts essentially to bifurcated lives by referring to themselves by one name and gender at school and another at home because this would only add to their confusion. Hopefully educators in the guise of activists, whether in California or elsewhere, however well-intentioned they may be, will honor the primacy of parental rights by refraining from interfering in family matters by no longer refusing to inform caregivers about issues and developments of great importance in the lives of their children.

Finally, state and local educational officials must respect the First Amendment religious and free speech rights of teachers by not attempting to compel them to violate their faiths in prohibiting them from talking openly and honestly with parents about the gender identities and other significant issues impacting the lives of their children.

Charles J. Russo, M.Div., J.D., Ed.D., is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law in the School of Law at the University of Dayton, Ohio

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