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Reason
Reason
Eugene Volokh

Court Will Hear Parental Rights Case Related to Minors Seeking "Gender-Affirming Treatment"

The Question Presented from the petition, which the Court just granted:

The "interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children[] is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court." Troxel v. Granville (2000). But that right is mere rhetoric if federal judges bar parents from court via a miserly interpretation of standing doctrine—a question, as three Justices recently recognized, that is of "great and growing national importance." Lee v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1 (Alito, J., statement).

It is certainly important to Petitioners, who are parents of gender-confused children (including one child who previously ran away) and who do not wish to affirm that confusion. They challenged Washington laws designed to give runaway minors "gender-affirming treatment" without parental notice or consent. But despite their being the challenged laws' target, and despite their alleging specific current harms and a substantial risk of specific future harms to their ability to parent, the Ninth Circuit held that Petitioners lacked Article III standing.

The question presented is:

Whether parents have standing to challenge a law or policy that deliberately displaces their decision-making role as to "gender transitions" of their children, and in so doing creates present and likely future impediments to their ability to parent their children as they deem best for them.

And from the State's response, which urged the Court not to grant review:

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