RELEASE: AG Labrador Defends Parents’ Rights at Supreme Court
BOISE, ID — Attorney General Raúl Labrador and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier led a 22-state coalition urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that parents can challenge a Washington State law that shuts them out of decisions about their runaway children. The Court will decide whether the parents have standing to sue. If they win, the case returns to the lower courts, where the parents can argue the law violates their constitutional rights.
Washington State’s 2023 law allows youth shelters to skip notifying parents when a runaway minor seeks what the law calls “gender-affirming treatment.” Washington State defines that term to include mastectomies and facial feminization surgery. Parents may never learn where their child is, and Washington State law limits their access to the child’s treatment records.
The parents challenging the law have children experiencing gender dysphoria or gender confusion. One child has run away before. In another family, an adult sibling threatened to take a minor child to a “safe place.” The Ninth Circuit ruled the parents lacked standing, calling their harm self-inflicted and too speculative. Three judges dissented from the court’s refusal to rehear the case.
Idaho shares a border and a federal appeals court with Washington State. Because Idaho sits within the Ninth Circuit, the standing rule applies in Idaho’s federal courts, and Idaho parents challenging similar laws or policies could be turned away before a judge ever hears their claims.
“Parents have a God-given right and responsibility to guide their children’s upbringing and protect them,” said Attorney General Labrador. “Washington State took that away from parents and gave it to youth shelters, letting runaway minors pursue gender transitions and puberty blockers while moms and dads are left searching for their missing children. As a father of five, I find that unconscionable. Idaho shares a border with Washington State and answers to the same Ninth Circuit that refused to hear these parents. That ruling directly impacts Idaho families, and I’m fighting to overturn it.”
Read the brief here.
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