The Ninth Circuit has blocked California's AB 1955, which barred schools from telling parents about their own children's gender transitions, marking the second time federal courts have stopped the law since the Supreme Court weighed in on the side of parental rights in March.
California's attempt to cut parents out of their children's gender transitions at school has now been stopped twice in federal court, and the walls may be closing in on Sacramento's position. A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Assembly Bill 1955, known as the SAFETY Act, in the case City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom. The ruling directly follows the U.S. Supreme Court's per curiam decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, issued March 2, in which six justices concluded that California school policies keeping parents in the dark about gender transitions likely violated both the Free Exercise Clause and the 14th Amendment's due process protections for parental rights.
AB 1955, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on July 15, 2024, and in effect since January 1, 2025, prohibited California schools from disclosing a child's gender identity, sexual orientation, or gender expression to that child's parents without the child's consent. The bill was marketed under the acronym SAFETY: Support Academic Futures and Equality for Today's Youth. Supporters argued it protected LGBT students from hostile home environments. Critics, including the parent-plaintiffs who brought the Mirabelli case, said it made the state a co-conspirator in hiding medical and social transitions from the very adults legally responsible for those children.
The Ninth Circuit's panel had initially rejected the Huntington Beach challenge before the Supreme Court stepped in. After Mirabelli v. Bonta came down, the panel reconsidered and found the plaintiff-parents satisfied all requirements for emergency relief. The court's language was direct: "parents, not the State, have primary authority with respect to the upbringing and education of children" and parents "have the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children." The panel enjoined state defendants from enforcing Sections 5 and 6 of the law as to parent plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court's March ruling, case number 607 U.S. 492, vacated the Ninth Circuit's prior stay as to parent plaintiffs and concluded that parents seeking religious exemptions were likely to succeed on Free Exercise and Due Process grounds. The high court found California likely could not require a child's consent before a school may tell a parent about that child's gender transition, nor force schools to use children's preferred names and pronouns over their parents' objections. The 6-3 vote left no ambiguity about where the Court's majority stood.
What Comes Next
The injunction currently protects the plaintiff-parent class members in Huntington Beach, not every California parent statewide. That scope matters. Families outside the plaintiff class are still governed by the law unless additional suits expand the protected group or California chooses to suspend enforcement more broadly. Attorney General Rob Bonta's office has not indicated it will voluntarily stand down, which sets up the possibility of California seeking en banc review before the full Ninth Circuit, a move that would put the case in front of a larger panel but would face the same Supreme Court precedent the three-judge panel just applied.
The legal footing under Sacramento has shifted considerably. Before Mirabelli, California could point to Ninth Circuit rulings in its favor. Now the panel that once sided with the state has reversed course on direct instruction from six Supreme Court justices. Any en banc attempt would need to account for that, and the appetite for open defiance of a clear SCOTUS signal tends to be limited even in the most liberal federal circuit in the country.
Governor Newsom championed AB 1955 as a student safety measure, but the courts have now twice characterized the law differently: as a state-engineered exclusion of parents from decisions that are constitutionally theirs to make. The Ninth Circuit's injunction is preliminary, not permanent, and the underlying appeal has not been fully resolved. But the trajectory is clear. Two federal courts, from the district level through the Supreme Court and back to the Ninth Circuit on remand, have looked at California's law and blocked it. The state's next legal move will determine whether this fight continues to trial or Sacramento accepts the reality that the courts have drawn a line.
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