A New Jersey school district faces a federal lawsuit for maintaining a policy that lets children change their gender identity at school in secret, even after two Supreme Court decisions affirmed parents' constitutional right to know.

The Thomas More Society filed suit on August 24 against the School District of the Chathams on behalf of Moms for Liberty and two anonymous parents of elementary school-aged daughters. The complaint accuses the district of violating the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and parental rights the Supreme Court reinforced in its rulings in Mirabelli v. Bonta and Mahmoud v. Taylor.

At issue is a district policy that allows students to change their name in official school records, use bathrooms and locker rooms matching their stated gender identity, and leave a school guidance counselor, not a parent, to decide "whether, and to what extent" families are told. Christopher Ferrara, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, told Fox News Digital that the Supreme Court has already settled the standing question.

"The court has made clear in the Mirabelli case, and the Third Circuit has a decision along the same lines, that parents have standing to challenge a policy like this, which would hide a gender transition from the parents, whether or not the child is actually transitioning."

Ferrara argued that parents do not need to prove their own child is currently transitioning. The Supreme Court's reasoning, he said, treats parents themselves as "the objects of this policy", meaning the mere existence of a secrecy rule injures their rights.

Chatham's board president dismissed the Supreme Court's Mirabelli ruling as non-binding

The lawsuit did not materialize overnight. At a June 15, 2026, school board meeting, board president Ann Ciccarelli told attendees the district was not legally bound by the Supreme Court's Mirabelli decision. She said the district was instead required to follow the New Jersey Department of Education's 2018 guidance on transgender students.

That position has a problem. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has acknowledged that Policy 5756, the state guidance Ciccarelli cited, is not mandatory, Just The News reported. The district is treating optional state guidance as a binding obligation while dismissing an actual Supreme Court ruling, a posture that hands the plaintiffs a ready-made argument about defiance.

The Supreme Court issued its Mirabelli injunction on March 2, reinstating a permanent injunction against gender-secrecy policies in public schools and citing a century of parental-rights precedents. The Chathams district kept its policy in place anyway.

Moms for Liberty CEO and co-founder Tina Descovich framed the board's stance as open defiance.

"The Chathams Board of Education's open defiance of the Supreme Court's clear rulings in Mirabelli and Mahmoud is an assault on the constitutional rights of every family in that district."

Students face suspension for using a classmate's legal name, Descovich alleges

The policy does not stop at secrecy. Descovich alleged the district can punish students who refuse to use a classmate's preferred pronouns or chosen name, even if the slip is accidental.

"They can do that just one time on accident, and they can be punished up to suspension just for using the wrong pronoun or the wrong name of someone that is identifying as something other than they actually are."

If accurate, the policy compels speech from children while hiding the underlying transition from their parents. A student could be disciplined for calling a classmate by the name that classmate's own mother and father still use at home, because the school never told the family anything changed.

Descovich pointed to both recent Supreme Court decisions as dispositive.

"The Supreme Court has ruled twice on these issues. We know that parents have to have a right to opt out of things that violate their religious beliefs."

She added that the district's guidance violates both Mirabelli and Mahmoud, and that the school "has a duty and responsibility to protect constitutional rights of the citizens in its community, of its employees, of its students, of its families, and it is not doing that."

Parents who spoke up faced threats, one family needed police protection

Ferrara described a hostile climate for families who have challenged the policy publicly. Parents who spoke out have been subjected to threats and intimidation, he said. At least one family has had police security stationed outside their home.

"This is what happens when you oppose these policies. You basically are going to be subjected to a vicious public backlash by ideologues who are totally intolerant of basically the normal point of view on this issue."

The two parent plaintiffs in the lawsuit remain anonymous. Both have elementary school-aged daughters in the district. Fox News Digital reached out to the School District of the Chathams for comment; no response was reported.

California is running the same playbook in a different court

New Jersey is not alone. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is arguing before the Ninth Circuit that the Supreme Court's Mirabelli ruling does not require schools to affirmatively notify parents about a child's social gender transition. A Thomas More Society brief in that case called California's reading of the decision "inexplicable."

"California's decision to treat that single holding as principal, while ignoring the rest of what the Supreme Court said, is inexplicable."

Opponents warn that California's continued litigation wastes taxpayer money and will result in larger fee awards against the state when it loses. The pattern across both states is the same: blue-state officials treating Supreme Court rulings as suggestions rather than binding law, then spending public funds to defend that position in court.

Ferrara warned that the risk to families extends beyond any single district. Under policies like the Chathams', a child could adopt a new gender identity under peer pressure, the influence of teachers, or social media, and the parents who are legally responsible for that child would be the last to know.

"There's always a risk, of course, that the child under peer pressure, or the influence of teachers, or social media, will go along with this ridiculous trend and decide that his gender is not the biological one that parents believe is God-given and immutable, but some other gender."

The lawsuit rests on straightforward constitutional ground. The Supreme Court has now ruled twice that parents hold fundamental rights over their children's upbringing, rights that a local school board cannot override by deferring to an eight-year-old state guidance document that even the state's own attorney general says is optional.

When a school district decides that a guidance counselor's judgment outranks the Constitution and the parents who send their children through its doors every morning, the question is no longer about policy. It is about who governs a child's life, the family, or the bureaucracy.