‘Parents need to be aware that this is happening’: High-profile transgender cases shaping America’s battle over parental rights

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling to block a California law barring schools from notifying parents about their students’ transgender status is the latest flashpoint in a judiciary increasingly drawn into America’s fiercest cultural fights.

The justices in March agreed that California’s policies requiring school staff to hide a child’s gender transition from parents likely violate the Constitution’s free exercise and due process clauses. The preliminary ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta marked a “watershed moment for parental rights in America,” the Thomas More Society special counsel Paul Jonna said, noting that states are now put on notice that they cannot “secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.” 

Restoring an injunction against California as the lower courts weigh the case, the Supreme Court’s majority noted the state’s policies “substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’” When a child displays gender dysphoria at school, “California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours. These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

The California case is just one of several high-profile transgender cases moving through the courts – legal battles that are likely to shape religious liberty and parental rights for years to come. Here are some key cases The Lion is tracking.

Detransitioner Chloe Cole takes on the medical establishment

Prominent detransitioner Chloe Cole is in a years-long legal fight with Kaiser Permanente after her doctors performed gender-transitioning procedures on her as a minor. Cole argues she was coerced by doctors into undergoing a gender transition as they placed her on puberty blockers, conducted hormone therapy, and surgically removed her breasts, all while she was 13 to 16 years old.

Her legal team at Center for American Liberty said doctors convinced her parents that her gender dysphoria wouldn’t resolve itself and said she a high suicide risk unless she transitioned. Cole argues the doctors hid the full range of treatment options from her, instead convincing her that she had to undergo a “physical, chemical, and social transition to a male role.” 

“Chloe has suffered irreversible harm at the hands of Kaiser and its doctors, and she deserves justice,” Center for American Liberty CEO Mark Trammell told The Lion in an interview. “So we’re hoping to recover financial damages for Chloe, but I’m also hoping that more broadly, we’re able to demonstrate that this type of case can and should move forward for other detransitioners who, maybe like Chloe, are suffering today from the injuries that they received at the hands of doctors they should have been able to trust.”

Kaiser announced a pause last year on gender transition surgeries for minors, and the Trump administration has made halting irreversible gender procedures on children a top priority. Still, Trammell pointed out, none of that changes what already happened to people like Cole.

“I’m thrilled to see that this administration is taking this issue so seriously and doing everything in its power to protect kids moving forward, but there are a lot of young people who have already been injured,” he said, adding that the goal of detransitioner lawsuits is to find the victims some relief. “Financial damages will never fully compensate a young woman for perhaps the loss of her ability to have children, or if she is able to have children, the ability to nurse those kids; it will never get her back her innocence that these hospitals stole from her. But what we can do is do our best to recover some financial damages at a minimum, to help cover some of the ongoing medical expenses that these young women are going to have.”

Cole’s trial is set for April 5, 2027, and represents one of a number of lawsuits in what has become an emerging field in the healthcare legal landscape.

“It is kind of a novel application of medical negligence litigation,” Trammell said. “The whole idea of transitioning kids, that was not happening a decade or so ago.” Earlier this year, another detransitioner, Fox Varian, was awarded $2 million in damages for gender-transitioning procedures she received as a minor, which she has said left her “disfigured for life.” 

Kaiser did not return a request from The Lion seeking comment on the upcoming case.

Another detransitioner seeks damages for a ‘radical double mastectomy’

Trammell’s organization is pursuing a similar lawsuit on behalf of Luka Hein, who said doctors pressured her to surgically remove her breasts when she was 16 years old.

“Doctors rushed her into a radical double mastectomy,” the center noted, “without first trying less invasive treatment options like counseling, without first prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy, and after just two visits to the University of Nebraska Medical Center gender clinic.”

Hein is also seeking financial damages, and Trammell said he expects a trial to be set for early 2027. The Lion reached out to the Nebraska Medical Center for comment on the upcoming case. 

Both Cole’s and Hein’s cases should serve as a warning to parents to watch out for “who is having influence over their kids,” Trammell said. 

“So many of the young people who we represent in these cases were first influenced on social media by trans activists who presented this lifestyle as though it is their pathway to happiness and fulfillment,” he said, adding that schools are also socially transitioning students, which is often a first step to further interventions from a doctor. “Parents need to be aware that this is happening. It’s happening all across the country.”

Nationwide, doctors are separating children from their parents and “having one conversation with the child and then a completely separate conversation with the parents,” he added, “and they don’t always match up.”

Gender clinics often give parents a “false dilemma” by telling them they must decide if they want a dead daughter or a living son, scaring them into believing they must surgically intervene or else lose their child, he noted.

“Parents need to understand that there is a growing body of scientific study across the world – not just here in the U.S., but across the world – that shows that intervention of this kind … actually increases the rate of suicide when these interventions are administered as minors,” he said. “Parents need to be aware of the science behind it and be able to push back if someone is lying to them about what their medical options are.”

Transgender sports at the high court

The Supreme Court is actively weighing two cases – B.P.J. v. West Virginia and Little v. Hecox, out of Idaho – over whether state bans on biological males in female sports are constitutional. The states argue their bans are necessary to protect women’s rights by ensuring an even playing field. 

LGBT advocates in Idaho are challenging the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which states, “Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.” The activists suing over it​​ have argued the law amounts to an “outright ban on participation of transgender student athletes.” The state has argued that men and women are biologically different, and that female athletes deserve their own lane to compete in. 

“Idaho’s women and girls deserve an equal playing field,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in a statement. “For too long, activists have worked to sideline women and girls in their own sports.”

In West Virginia, a similar legal battle is unfolding over the Save Women’s Sports Act. “It’s unfair to let male athletes compete against women,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said, noting that women’s sports should be preserved for women. 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in January, as The Lion reported, and a majority of the justices appeared poised to uphold the state laws. A decision is expected by July.