‘Watershed moment’: Judge allows class action suit over school’s gender policies

By Daniel Payne

CNA Staff, Oct 17, 2025 /
13:19 pm

A federal judge in California will allow a class action lawsuit to proceed for potentially millions of parents and teachers regarding school district rules that hide child “gender transitions” from parents. 

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled Oct. 15 that the lawsuit Mirabelli v. Olson will proceed as a class action, becoming what the Thomas More Society said is potentially “one of the largest civil rights class actions” in California history. 

Peter Breen, the head of litigation at the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm, said in the group’s Oct. 16 press release that parents have a “fundamental right” to direct their children’s education and moral upbringing, and that California school officials “cannot override that right by keeping parents in the dark about major issues and developments in their child’s life.” 

In his ruling, Benitez said the lawsuit satisfies the criteria for class action status. School districts in California, he said, “are ultimately state agents under state control,” and thus the issue of settling “statewide policy” means the class action structure is “superior to numerous individual actions by individual parents and teachers.”

The class action ruling comes ahead of a Nov. 17 hearing in the same court, one that the Thomas More Society says may “potentially deliver a final ruling” on the dispute, including whether secretive school transgender policies violate parents’ constitutional rights. 

“Parents should never be treated as strangers in their own children’s lives,” Breen said. 

The legal group said the suit will now represent “all California parents and teachers affected by school district policies that conceal children’s gender transitions from their families.” 

Those policies have been at the center of ongoing debate over transgenderism and gender ideology in recent years. LGBT advocates and school leaders around the country have argued that teachers and school administrators should be permitted to exclude parents from knowing if their children begin “identifying” as the opposite sex. 

Activists have also argued that school officials should be allowed to facilitate child “gender transitions” without informing parents. 

Rules allowing teachers to hide such sensitive information from parents have come under fire from advocates in recent years, including the Trump administration. 

In February the White House launched an investigation into five school districts in northern Virginia to determine whether their transgender policies violated executive orders forbidding schools from facilitating “gender transitions.”

In 2023, meanwhile, Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued directives affirming that parents in the state would enjoy broad oversight of their children while they are enrolled in public schools, reversing earlier rules that allowed teachers to keep children’s transgender “identities” secret from parents.

Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.

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