In Lee v. Poudre School District R-1, the justices declined to weigh in on a lawsuit against a Colorado school district by parents who allege that the district violated their constitutional rights by interfering with their parental decision making. Specifically, the parents contended that the school district’s policies “exclude parents from the conversation of their child’s gender identity by, inter alia, actively discouraging disclosure of such information by school officials” and “sowing doubt in the minds of students regarding the trustworthiness of their parents” – by, for example, telling students not to tell their parents what they discuss at an after-school group that addresses gender and sexuality, and by directing school staff to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns with the child, but the child’s birth name and pronouns with the parents. “This secrecy and concealment toward parents whose children discuss topics related to gender identity at school creates division within the parent-child relationship and undermines the trust essential to a family’s foundation,” the parents said.
A federal district court ruled for the school district, concluding that the parents had not shown that the school district had an official policy that caused the parents’ alleged injury. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld that decision.
On Monday, the court denied the parents’ petition for review. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, penned a statement regarding the decision to deny review. Alito wrote that he agreed with the court’s decision because the parents had not challenged “the ground for the ruling below.” “But I remain concerned,” Alito added, “that some federal courts are ‘tempt[ed]’ to avoid confronting a ‘particularly contentious constitutional questio[n]’: whether a school district violates parents’ fundamental rights ‘when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process.’” “The troubling—and tragic—allegations in this case underscore the ‘great and growing national importance’ of the question that these parent petitioners present,’” he concluded.
The justices denied review without comment in Doe v. Grindr, in which the court had been asked to weigh in on the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives websites and online platforms immunity from lawsuits arising from content posted by their users, and for their moderation of content.
The question comes to the court in a lawsuit brought against Grindr, a dating app that is popular with bisexual and gay men, by an anonymous plaintiff, known only as John Doe. Doe contends that when he was 15, Grindr offered him a membership and recommended him to adults for sex, and that he was then raped by four adults over four days.
A federal court in California dismissed Doe’s case. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright acknowledged that the facts of Doe’s case were “indisputably alarming and tragic,” but he concluded that they were barred by Section 230. Although Doe “seeks to hold Grindr liable for the design, development, and sale of a defective product,” Wright wrote, in fact “Doe’s claims seek to hold Grindr liable based on its publishing of user content.”
When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that ruling, Doe came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to take up his case. “This abdication of responsibility by platforms is exactly what Congress enacted Section 230 to prevent, yet it has turned into a license to unleash harm in the name of profit,” he argued.
