The Liberty Justice Center has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Maryland school district policy requiring teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns, arguing in a July 31 amicus brief that the rule violates the constitutional rights of both teachers and parents.
The brief, filed through the organization’s PARENTS Initiative, supports a petition for Supreme Court review in Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the district’s policy in a divided ruling on Jan. 28.
Montgomery County Public Schools’ policy requires staff to use students’ requested names and pronouns, including those that differ from a student’s biological sex, and bars staff from disclosing that information to parents on confidentiality grounds unless the student consents. “That arrangement does not merely accommodate student preferences, it supplants parental authority,” the Liberty Justice Center’s brief states.
The case centers on Kimberly Polk, a former substitute teacher who objected to the policy on religious grounds and asked to be allowed to refer to students by last name when their preferred pronouns conflicted with her beliefs. The district denied that request. The 4th Circuit ruled 2-1 against Polk, finding that because her classroom speech was part of her official job duties, it counted as government speech with little First Amendment protection, and that the policy was neutral and generally applicable enough to survive her free-exercise claim. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III dissented, writing that the majority’s reasoning would let a school district “mandate that teachers voice opinions contrary to their own without any First Amendment protection whatsoever.”
The Liberty Justice Center did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. In a statement, senior counsel Timothy Snowball said the organization believes public schools should not require teachers to act against their religious beliefs or adopt policies that exclude parents from important decisions involving their children. The brief argues the case “presents an ideal vehicle to address whether policymakers have the ability to suppress religious expressions and practices under the guise of facially neutral policies, provided they are diligent in concealing their true motivations.”
The brief also points to Mirabelli v. Bonta, in which the Supreme Court in March granted an emergency application to block enforcement of a California policy barring schools from telling parents about a student’s gender transition without the student’s consent. In a per curiam order, the Court lifted a 9th Circuit stay on a lower-court injunction as it applied to the parent plaintiffs, finding they were likely to succeed on claims that the policy violated their rights under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause; the order did not extend the same relief to the teacher plaintiffs in that case. The Liberty Justice Center’s brief in Polk cites that outcome as further reason the Supreme Court should not allow parents to be excluded from decisions involving their children’s mental health and well-being.
The Liberty Justice Center has raised similar arguments in a separate case challenging a California law that limits when school employees can tell parents about a student’s social transition. Montgomery County Public Schools has not yet filed a response to Polk’s petition, and the Supreme Court has not indicated when it will decide whether to take up the case.
