New Hampshire’s top court on Friday upheld a school district’s policy that encourages teachers and officials to refrain from disclosing students’ transgender or gender nonconforming status to their parents or others without the students’ permission.
In a 3-1 decision, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled against a mother who challenged the Manchester School District’s policy, concluding that it did not infringe upon a fundamental parenting right protected by the state’s constitution.
This ruling marks the first time a state supreme court has addressed one of the numerous cases brought by conservatives and parents challenging school policies that seek to respect the wishes of transgender students who do not want to be “outed” to their parents without consent. Most of these challenges have been filed in federal court. Lawyers representing both the mother and the school district have not commented on the ruling.
The mother, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, filed the lawsuit in 2022 after discovering that her child had requested to be referred to by a name typically associated with a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Upon learning this, the mother informed school officials that she wanted them to address her child according to the student’s birth gender, using the given name and pronouns corresponding with the child’s biological sex. However, a school principal cited the district’s policy, first adopted in 2021, which states that staff could not “disclose a student’s choice to parents if asked not to.”
The mother argued in her lawsuit that the policy interfered with her fundamental right under the state’s constitution to raise and care for her child. The school district countered by asserting that while the mother had the right to parent her child as she wished, this right did not extend to directing how the child was taught, and the policy did not interfere with her parental rights.
Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, appointed by Republican Governor Chris Sununu, wrote in the court’s opinion that the policy did not directly affect a parent’s ability to care for their child, as it merely encouraged non-disclosure rather than mandating it, and did not promote students to hide information. “We cannot conclude that any interference with parental rights which may result from non-disclosure is of constitutional dimension,” MacDonald wrote.
The ruling was praised by LGBTQ rights group GLAD and the American Civil Liberties Union, which had submitted a friend-of-the-court brief urging the New Hampshire Supreme Court to uphold the trial court judge’s decision to dismiss the mother’s case. “Schools must provide a welcoming and supportive environment for all students,” said Chris Erchull, a lawyer at GLAD, in a statement.
Justice Melissa Beth Countway, another appointee of Governor Sununu, dissented, arguing that “accurate information in response to parents’ inquiries about a child’s expressed gender identity is imperative to the parents’ ability to assist and guide their child.”
The case is Doe v. Manchester School District, New Hampshire Supreme Court, No. 2022-0537
