Parental rights issues are heating up at the Supreme Court

Published July 29, 2026 5:00am ET | Updated July 29, 2026 7:40am ET



The Supreme Court will take up another case involving parental rights in its upcoming term, as states craft laws aimed at usurping parental authority, especially via LGBT policies, and courts hand down a patchwork of rulings about where parents’ right to dictate their child’s upbringing ends.

The high court will hear arguments in International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson next term, weighing whether parents may sue Washington state over its law that “deliberately displaces their decisionmaking 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.” The law itself allows runaway minors to get transgender surgeries without parental permission, in addition to exempting the state from a requirement to inform the parents of their child’s location and condition, by making genital and chest surgeries a “protected health care service.”

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