In July 2025, Defending Education (DE) filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in Heaps v. Delaware Valley Regional High School Board of Education.
Across the country, more and more schools have policies that let staff socially transition young children in secret, giving them new names, pronouns, restroom access, and even sleeping arrangements on field trips. Parents are left in the dark. When they sue in federal court, some judges rule that they don’t have “standing,” or the legal right, to challenge these policies.
DE’s brief argues that, of all the rights parents have in raising their children, the most basic is knowing how their child identifies at school. In 2000, the Supreme Court called parents’ right to raise their children perhaps the oldest of the fundamental rights it has recognized. Schools that actively deceive parents fail to meet the constitutional standard required to burden that right.
Read the full brief below:
