The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review another case involving school district practices on gender identity—its third since last year—with three justices suggesting that the issue is one of “great and growing national importance” that the court will likely need to address in the future.
Meanwhile, the justices declined to hear an appeal from conservative media figure Alex E. Jones of a $1.4 billion defamation and emotional distress judgment won by families of 15 victims of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School after Jones alleged on his internet and radio platforms that the tragedy was staged by actors.
The court also refused to take up the appeal of an Arizona mother who claims that a school principal retaliated against her for advocacy concerning school policies when he banned her from the school’s premises.
A flow of school gender-identity cases reaching high court
The gender-identity case stems from a suit against the Poudre school district in Colorado by two sets of parents who contend a teacher discussed gender identity with their 6th grade children and invited them to meetings of the school’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance club.
Neither student questioned their gender identity, court papers say, and one of the students attempted suicide after an emotional decline that began with attendance at the club meeting, the parents alleged. A teacher awarded prizes to students who came out as transgender at the meetings, the suit alleges.
The parents sued the school district, alleging a violation of their 14th Amendment due-process right to direct the education of their children. Both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled against the parents.
The appeals court said the parents had failed to show that the school district had a policy of secrecy and keeping information away from parents about their children’s gender identity.
In their appeal in Lee v. Poudre School District R-1, the parents say, “This court’s intervention is necessary to confirm that parents are not powerless in the face of school policies that denigrate parental rights across the country.”
The school district, in a brief urging the justices not to take up the case, said, “Even if this court is interested in the parents’ arguments, this is the wrong case to consider whether public school employees’ alleged discouraged disclosure regarding gender identity and expression implicates a fundamental right.”
The high court on Oct. 14 denied review in the case, with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. issuing a short statement saying he concurred in the denial for procedural reasons.
Alito said he was concerned that some lower federal courts are avoiding the question of “whether a school district violates parents’ fundamental rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process.”
Alito was joined in the statement by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, and he echoed an assertion made by parents, and the conservative legal groups representing them, in a similar case last term, from Wisconsin, in which he and Thomas dissented from the court’s denial of review. (Alito and Thomas had also dissented from a denial in a similar case from Pennsylvania in the spring of 2024, without offering a written opinion.)
The parents “tell us that nearly 6,000 public schools have policies—as [the Poudre district] allegedly does—that purposefully interfere with parents’ access to critical information about their children’s gender-identity choices and school personnel’s involvement in and influence on those choices,” Alito said in the statement in the latest case. The troubling—and tragic—allegations in this case underscore the great and growing national importance of the question that these parent petitioners present.”
The court has yet another appeal pending from parents alleging their school district near Fort Collins, Colo., “secretly facilitated” their child’s gender transition. And the court has granted review this term of two cases involving state laws that bar transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ school sports.
Justices decline to take up Alex Jones case involving Sandy Hook school shooting theories
The Alex Jones case involves the $1.4 billion judgment won by families of some of the victims of the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which an assailant killed 20 1st graders and six adults. Jones had advanced theories on his radio and internet shows that the tragedy was a hoax.
A Connecticut state court jury awarded the plaintiffs the massive award, which has led to major legal fights over the sale of Jones’ assets to settle the claims.
In his Supreme Court appeal in Jones v. Lafferty, the media figure repeated some of his theories, though he emphasized his view that it was efforts by “the mainstream media and the Obama administration to convert the tragedy into a mass theatrical production in service of anti-gun legislation.”
His court filing claimed the legal tests for defamation were not met and said the $1.4 billion judgment “is an amount that can never be paid.”
The parents did not file a formal brief in response, and the Supreme Court declined Jones’s appeal without comment or dissent.
Court refuses to take up appeal of parent barred from school premises
The court also declined without comment to hear the appeal of Rebecca Hartzell, an Arizona mother who claims she was wrongly barred from the premises of her children’s school after a 2020 conflict with the principal.
Hartzell arrived at her children’s elementary school in the Marana Unified School District one day to watch them deliver projects. But both children were scheduled to present them at the same time in different classrooms, leading Hartzell to complain to the principal and allegedly touch her arm.
The principal, Andrea Divijak, allegedly had Hartzell removed by the police and barred her from the campus. The parent sued the district and the principal for, among other things, a First Amendment retaliation claim, but lower courts ruled against her and held that the principal had qualified immunity from the retaliation claim because there was no precedent that put her on notice that barring the parent would be unlawful.
Hartzell appealed to the Supreme Court, emphasizing her parental right to oversee the education of her children, and that she was not given a real due-process opportunity to challenge her ban.
The Marana district said in a brief that Hartzell was asking the high court “to constitutionalize a parental right to enter school campuses,” something no federal court has authorized.
The justices declined review without comment in Hartzell v. Marana Unified School District.
