Petition for Writ of Certiorari — International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Bob Ferguson, Governor of Washington, et al.

Supreme Court briefJan 7, 2026

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No. ______

In the Supreme Court of the United States

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS FOR ETHICAL CARE, INC.;

ADVOCATES PROTECTING CHILDREN; PARENTS 1A, 1B,

2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, 5A, AND 5B, Petitioners,

ROBERT FERGUSON, GOVERNOR OF WASHINGTON,

IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY; NICK BROWN, ATTORNEY

GENERAL OF WASHINGTON, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY;

AND TANA SENN, SECRETARY OF THE WASHINGTON

DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN, YOUTH,

AND FAMILIES, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

to the United States Court of Appeals

for the Ninth Circuit

PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI

GENE P. HAMILTON

GENE C. SCHAERR

NICHOLAS R. BARRY

Counsel of Record

IAN D. PRIOR

EDWARD H. TRENT

JAMES K. ROGERS

HANNAH C. SMITH

AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

JAMES C. PHILLIPS

FOUNDATION

SCHAERR | JAFFE LLP

611 Pennsylvania Ave S.E., #231 1717 K Street NW

Washington, DC 20003

Suite 900

(202) 964-3721

Washington, DC 20006

(202) 787-1060

gschaerr@schaerr-jaffe.com

Counsel for Petitioners

QUESTION PRESENTED

The “interest of parents in the care, custody, and

control of their children[] is perhaps the oldest of the

fundamental liberty interests recognized by this

Court.” Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65 (2000). But

that right is mere rhetoric if federal judges bar parents

from court via a miserly interpretation of standing

doctrine—a question, as three Justices recently

recognized, that is of “great and growing national

importance.” Lee v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1, 607 U.S. --,

2025 WL 2906469, *1 (2025) (Alito, J., statement)

(citation omitted).

It is certainly important to Petitioners, who are

parents of gender-confused children (including one

child who previously ran away) and who do not wish

to affirm that confusion. They challenged Washington

laws designed to give runaway minors “genderaffirming treatment” without parental notice or

consent. But despite their being the challenged laws’

target, and despite their alleging specific current

harms and a substantial risk of specific future harms

to their ability to parent, the Ninth Circuit held that

Petitioners lacked Article III standing.

The question presented is:

Whether parents have standing to challenge a law

or policy that deliberately displaces their decisionmaking role as to “gender transitions” of their

children, and in so doing creates present and likely

future impediments to their ability to parent their

children as they deem best for them.

PARTIES

The case caption contains the names of all parties

to the proceeding. The district court allowed the

Parent Plaintiffs to proceed under pseudonyms. The

names of the Respondents were substituted according

to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43.

Petitioners International Partners for Ethical

Care, Inc., Advocates Protecting Children, and

Parents 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, 5A and 5B

were the Appellants in the Ninth Circuit and the

Plaintiffs in the district court.

Respondents Robert Ferguson, Governor of

Washington; Nick Brown, Attorney General of

Washington; and Tana Senn, Secretary of the

Washington Department of Children, Youth, and

Families were Appellees in the Ninth Circuit, having

been substituted for Jay Inslee, Governor of

Washington; Robert Ferguson, Attorney General of

Washington; and Ross Hunter, Secretary of the

Washington Department of Children, Youth, and

Families, Defendants in the district court.

iii

CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Petitioner International Partners for Ethical

Care, Inc. (IPEC) is a corporation formed and in good

standing in the State of Illinois under Section 501(c)(4)

of the Internal Revenue Code. IPEC is not publicly

traded, has no parent corporation, and no publicly held

corporation owns ten percent or more of its stock.

Petitioner Advocates Protecting Children is a

non-stock corporation formed and in good standing in

the State of Virginia under Section 501(c)(3) of the

Internal Revenue Code. Advocates Protecting

Children is not publicly traded, has no parent

corporation, and no publicly held corporation owns ten

percent or more of its stock.

Petitioners Parents 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A,

4B, 5A and 5B are individual persons, and no

corporate disclosure is required.

RELATED PROCEEDINGS

The following proceedings are related to this case:

•

International Partners for Ethical Care Inc. v.

Robert Ferguson, Governor, No. 24-3661 (9th Cir.)

(opinion affirming dismissal entered July 25,

2025 (App.A); petition for rehearing or rehearing

en banc denied December 5, 2025 (App.C)); and

•

International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v.

Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington, in his official

capacity, No. 3:23-cv-05736-DGE (W.D. Wash.)

(order dismissing claims entered May 15, 2024

(App.B)).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

QUESTION PRESENTED ........................................... i

PARTIES ......................................................................ii

CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT ........... iii

RELATED PROCEEDINGS....................................... iv

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ........................................ x

INTRODUCTION ........................................................ 1

OPINIONS BELOW .................................................... 3

JURISDICTION .......................................................... 3

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY

PROVISIONS ............................................................ 3

STATEMENT............................................................... 4

Operation of Washington’s Laws ................... 4

Parents are bypassed in their child’s

treatment. ................................................ 6

Notice to parents is denied or

delayed. .................................................. 11

Even if provided notice, parents are

not told about their child’s condition

or location. ............................................. 14

A child’s return is significantly

delayed. .................................................. 15

Factual Background...................................... 16

Procedural History ........................................ 18

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION ........ 20

As Multiple Justices Have Recognized,

the Question Presented Is “of Great and

Growing National Importance.” ................... 20

II.

In Denying Standing to Parent Plaintiffs,

the Ninth Circuit Deviated from This

Court’s and Other Circuits’ Standing

Precedent. ...................................................... 23

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s precedent on

standing when the plaintiff is the

object of the statute in question............ 23

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s and Fifth Circuit

precedent on standing when state

law interferes with parents’ current

ability to make critical decisions for

their children. ........................................ 28

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s and other circuits’

precedent on Article III standing

arising from threat of future injury. ..... 31

The Ninth Circuit’s decision reflects

a deeper confusion and conflict over

the proper standard applicable to a

motion to dismiss on standing. ............. 35

III. This is a Clean Vehicle for Deciding the

Question Presented. ...................................... 37

CONCLUSION .......................................................... 38

APPENDICES

vii

APPENDIX A:

Opinion, International Partners for Ethical

Care Inc. v. Robert Ferguson, Governor,

No. 24-3661 (9th Cir.), July 25, 2025,

Doc. 54................................................................... 1a

APPENDIX B:

Order Granting Defendants’ Motion

to Dismiss First Amended Complaint,

International Partners for Ethical

Care, Inc. v. Jay Inslee, Governor of

Washington, No. 3:23-cv-05736-DGE

(W.D. Wash.), May 15, 2024, Doc. 50 ................ 28a

APPENDIX C:

Order, International Partners for Ethical

Care Inc. v. Robert Ferguson, Governor,

No. 24-3661 (9th Cir.), Dec. 5, 2025, Doc. 64..... 32a

APPENDIX D:

Verified First Amended Complaint with

Verifications, International Partners for

Ethical Care, Inc. v. Jay Inslee, Governor

of Washington, in his official capacity,

No. 3:23-cv-05736-DGE (W.D. Wash.),

Nov. 6, 2023, Docs. 34, 34-1 to 34-9 ................... 66a

APPENDIX E:

U.S. Constitution art. III, §2 ............................ 149a

viii

APPENDIX F:

Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5599,

68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted

as 2023 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 408

(effective July 23, 2023) ................................... 151a

APPENDIX G:

Substitute House Bill 1406, 68th Leg.,

Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted as

2023 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 151

(effective July 23, 2023) ................................... 167a

APPENDIX H:

Wash. Rev. Code §13.32A.082,

Providing shelter to minor--Requirement

to notify parent, law enforcement, or

department (effective July 23, 2023) .............. 184a

APPENDIX I:

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.240,

Mental health services--Minors--Permitted

disclosures (effective June 6, 2024) ................ 189a

APPENDIX J:

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.265,

Adolescent behavioral health services-Disclosure of treatment information

and records--Restrictions and

requirements--Immunity from liability

(effective July 28, 2019) .................................. 195a

APPENDIX K:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.24.025,

Definitions (effective July 27, 2025)

[excerpted] ........................................................ 199a

APPENDIX L:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.430,

Release of adolescent’s mental health

information to parent without adolescent’s

consent (effective June 6, 2024) ...................... 200a

APPENDIX M:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.530 (1985),

Outpatient treatment of adolescent

(effective July 28, 2019) ................................... 201a

APPENDIX N:

Wash. Rev. Code §74.09.675(3) (2021),

Gender-affirming care services-Prohibited discrimination [excerpted] ............. 202a

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Page(s)

Baur v. Veneman,

352 F.3d 625 (2d Cir. 2003) .................................... 34

Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA,

568 U.S. 398 (2013) ................................................. 20

Colorado River Water Conservation Dist.

v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976)..................... 21

Deanda v. Becerra,

96 F.4th 750 (5th Cir. 2024) ............................. 28, 29

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v.

Gaston Copper Recycling Corp.,

204 F.3d 149 (4th Cir. 2000) ................................... 34

Harry v. Total Gas & Power N. Am., Inc.,

889 F.3d 104 (2d Cir. 2018) .................................... 35

In re Marriage of Kovacs,

854 P.2d 629 (Wash. 1993) ....................................... 7

In re Schering Plough Corp. Intron/Temodar

Consumer Class Action,

678 F.3d 235 (3rd Cir. 2012) ................................... 36

Jones v. L.A. Cent. Plaza LLC,

74 F.4th 1053 (9th Cir. 2023) ................................. 36

Kerin v. Titeflex Corp.,

770 F.3d 978 (1st Cir. 2014) ................................... 34

Lane v. Halliburton,

529 F.3d 548 (5th Cir. 2008) ................................... 36

Lee v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1,

607 U.S. --, 2025 WL 2906469 (2025) .............i, 21-23

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,

504 U.S. 555 (1992) ........................................... 26, 27

Mahmoud v. Taylor,

606 U.S. 522 (2025) ................................................. 30

Massachusetts v. EPA,

549 U.S. 497 (2007) ............................................ 31-34

Maya v. Centex Corp.,

658 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2011) ................................. 36

Miller v. Sybouts,

645 P.2d 1082 (Wash. 1982) ................................... 12

Murthy v. Missouri,

603 U.S. 43 (2024) ................................................... 23

National Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo,

602 U.S. 175 (2024) ................................................. 37

Parents Protecting Our Child., UA

v. Eau Claire Area Sch. Dist.,

145 S.Ct. 14 (2024) ......................................... 2, 20-22

Parham v. J. R.,

442 U.S. 584 (1979) ................................................. 28

Pierce v. Society of the Sisters,

268 U.S. 510 (1925) ................................................. 24

Pisciotta v. Old Nat’l Bancorp,

499 F.3d 629 (7th Cir. 2007) ................................... 34

Public Citizen, Inc. v. National

Highway Traffic Safety Admin.,

489 F.3d 1279 (D.C. Cir. 2007) ............................... 34

Quilloin v. Walcott,

434 U.S. 246 (1978) ................................................. 28

Román-Oliveras v. Puerto Rico Elec. Power

Auth., 655 F.3d 43 (1st Cir. 2011) .......................... 36

xii

Ross v. Bank of Am., N.A. (USA),

524 F.3d 217 (2d Cir. 2008) .................................... 35

Silha v. ACT, Inc.,

807 F.3d 169 (7th Cir. 2015) ................................... 35

Stalley v. Catholic Health Initiatives,

509 F.3d 517 (8th Cir. 2007) ................................... 36

Troxel v. Granville,

530 U.S. 57 (2000) ................................................ i, 28

Veit ex rel. Nelson v. Burlington N.

Santa Fe Corp., 249 P.3d 607 (Wash. 2011) .......... 12

Constitutional Provisions

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, §1 ....................................... 33

U.S. Const. art. III, §2 ................................................. 3

Statutes

28 U.S.C. §1254............................................................ 3

Wash. Rev. Code §13.32A.082 (2013).................... 4, 14

Wash. Rev. Code §13.32A.082

(2023) .............................................. 3- 6, 11-12, 14-15

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.010........................................ 5

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.240........................................ 6

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.265........................................ 6

Wash. Rev. Code §71.24.025........................................ 6

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.430........................................ 6

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.530 (2019) ............................ 4

Wash. Rev. Code §74.09.675 (2021) ........................ 4, 5

xiii

Rules

Fed. R. App. P. 43 ........................................................ii

Fed. R. Civ. P. 12 ....................................................... 35

Other Authorities

About Us,

Advocates Protecting Children ............................... 18

Associated Press,

Trans Minors Protected from Parents under

Washington Law, KNKX Pub. Radio

(May 9, 2023) ............................................................. 9

Declaration,

Doctors Protecting Children

(June 6, 2024) .................................................... 10, 11

Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5599,

68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023) ................ 3, 5, 13

Hearing on SB5599 Before S. Hum.

Servs. Comm., 68th Leg., Reg. Sess.

(Wash. 2023)............................................................ 12

Home,

Partners for Ethical Care ....................................... 18

House Floor Debate on SB5599

(Apr. 12, 2023) ..................................................... 8, 25

List of School District Transgender Gender

Nonconforming Student Policies,

Parents Defending Educ.

(updated Apr. 21, 2025) .......................................... 22

Riittakerttu Kaltiala-Heino et al.,

Gender Dysphoria in Adolescence:

Current Perspectives,

9 Adolesc. Health Med. Therapeutics 31 (2018) .... 11

xiv

Petition,

Lee v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1, No. 25-89

(U.S. July 21, 2025)................................................. 22

Policy Memo from Natalie Green, Asst. Sec’y,

and Steve Grilli, Asst. Sec’y of Partnership,

Prevention & Servs., Wash. Dep’t of Child.,

Youth & Fams., Changes to 3100,

Family Reconciliation Services Policy

(July 21, 2023) ......................................................... 13

Running Away,

Nemours KidsHealth (June 2018) ............................ 5

Senate Floor Debate on SB5599

(Mar. 1, 2023) ............................................ 8, 9, 16, 25

William Shakespeare,

Hamlet (circa 1601) ................................................. 38

Substitute House Bill 1406,

68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023) ...................... 3, 5

Kenneth J. Zucker,

The myth of persistence: response to

“A critical commentary on follow-up

studies and ‘desistance’ theories about

transgender and gender nonconforming

children” by Temple Newhook et al. (2018),

19 Int’l J. Transgenderism 231 (2018) ................... 10

INTRODUCTION

Viewing parents as the problem, Washington

passed laws that deliberately target certain parents by

supplanting them with the state in the context of

gender-confused runaway minors: Whenever a child

runs away, so long as he or she asks for “genderaffirming treatment,” a cascade of events is triggered.

First, the child is referred for “gender-affirming

treatment” without parental notice or consent. Second,

parents can be kept in the dark as to the child’s

location and condition. And third, reunification can be

significantly delayed, with conditions for that

reunification uncertain and entirely up to the state.

In addition to children’s rights organizations,

Petitioners are parents of gender-confused children,

including one child who has run away before. These

parents do not affirm their children’s confusion but

seek to raise them according to their biological sex—

making Petitioners the very objects of the challenged

laws. Because of Washington’s laws and regulations,

Petitioners alleged current chilling of their parenting

to avoid having their children take advantage of the

incentive Washington law now provides for the child

to run away and get the “treatment” the parents

oppose. Petitioners also alleged a substantial risk of

future harm to their parental, free speech, procedural,

and religious free exercise rights given their children’s

condition, their past behavior, and the perverse

incentives created by Washington’s laws for genderconfused children to run away.

But the Ninth Circuit found Petitioners lacked

standing to challenge the laws because the current

injuries were (in the court’s view) self-inflicted and the

future harms were not sufficiently immediate or

certain.

In so holding, the panel conflicted with multiple

precedents of this Court and other circuits. And the

panel held that Petitioners lacked standing despite

Judge VanDyke’s observation in his dissent from

denial of rehearing en banc that “Washington’s legal

regime does not merely invade plaintiffs’ parental

rights ***, it will obliterate them.” App.47a (cleaned

up). Judge Tung also dissented from denial of

rehearing, noting that “[t]he requirements of standing

are strict, but they are not cruel.” App.55a.

Sadly, this case is not an outlier. As Justices of

this Court have observed, lower federal courts often

misread standing doctrine to avoid ruling on

contentious constitutional issues. These Justices have

likewise observed that parental standing to challenge

gender-transition policies presents “a question of great

and growing national importance.” Parents Protecting

Our Child., UA v. Eau Claire Area Sch. Dist., 145 S.Ct.

14, 14 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting from denial of

certiorari). And this is a clean vehicle with which to

decide that issue because, among other things, the

case was dismissed on the pleadings and involves a

challenge to state laws that target the very parents

who sued.

For those and other reasons explained below, the

petition should be granted.

OPINIONS BELOW

The opinion of the United States Court of Appeals

for the Ninth Circuit is published at 146 F.4th 841 and

reproduced in Appendix A, App.1a-27a.

The district court’s order granting the motion to

dismiss is not reported but is available at 2024 WL

2214707 and reproduced in Appendix B, App.28a-31a.

The Ninth Circuit’s order denying Plaintiffs’

petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc is

published at 161 F.4th 604 and reproduced in

Appendix C, App.32a-65a.

JURISDICTION

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion issued on July 25,

2025. App.1a. Plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing and

rehearing en banc was denied on December 5, 2025,

App.32a, making this petition due March 5, 2026. This

Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §1254(1).

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY

PROVISIONS

Article III, section 2 of the United States

Constitution is reproduced in Appendix E, App.149a.

Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5599, 68th Leg., Reg.

Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted as 2023 Wash. Sess. Laws,

ch. 408 (effective July 23, 2023), is reproduced in

Appendix F, App.151a. Substitute House Bill 1406,

68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted as 2023

Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 151 (effective July 23, 2023), is

reproduced in Appendix G, App.167a. Washington

Revised Code §13.32A.082 (2023) is reproduced in

Appendix H, App.184a. Washington Revised Code

§71.34.530 (2019), is reproduced in Appendix M,

App.201a. Relevant portions of Washington Revised

Code §74.09.675 (2021) are reproduced in Appendix N,

App.202a.

STATEMENT

Operation of Washington’s Laws

For decades in Washington, whenever a youth

shelter received a runaway child, state law required

the shelter to contact the parents within seventy-two

hours, preferably within twenty-four hours.

Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) (2013). Further,

that “notification must include the whereabouts of the

youth, a description of the youth’s physical and

emotional condition,

and the circumstances

surrounding the youth’s contact with the shelter or

organization.” Ibid. Thus, under this baseline rule,

parents receive prompt, specific notice and are free to

pick up their child and take him or her home. 1

There was one exception—“[i]f there [were]

compelling reasons not to notify the parent,” ibid.—

that is, circumstances where “notifying the parent or

legal guardian [would] subject the minor to abuse or

neglect,” id. §13.32A.082(2)(c).

In 2023, however, the Washington Legislature

enacted two statutes that substantially amended

§13.32A.082, called the Family Reconciliation Act

(FRA): SHB1406, 68th Leg., Reg. Sess. §2 (Wash.

1 Under Washington Revised Code §13.32A.082(1)(a), notification

requirements also apply to “any person, unlicensed youth shelter,

or runaway and homeless youth program” that houses a runaway

child. Id. §13.32A.082(3) (2023).

2023), and SB5599, 68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023).

SB5599 expanded the definition of “compelling

reasons” to delay (or deny) parental notice to also

include “[w]hen a minor is seeking or receiving

protected health care services.” Wash.Rev.Code

§13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii) (2023). And it expanded the

definition of “protected health care services” to

“include[]

gender-affirming

treatment[.]”

Id.

§13.32A.082(2)(d). With these new modifications, the

notice requirements and the state’s new authority to

displace parents in such circumstances are now

contained in a provision known as “Paragraph 3.”

Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(3); App.155a;App.172a.

Thus, after this amendment, “compelling reasons”

not to notify parents are present whenever a minor

runs away to a shelter seeking “gender-affirming

treatment.” 3 While previously a shelter would notify

the parents directly, under the FRA amendments,

notice now only goes to the Department of Children,

Youth and Family Services (“DCYF”). Thus, “[t]hat

amendment now treats the parents of children

2 “[G]ender-affirming treatment” is “a service or product that a

health care provider *** prescribes to an individual to support

and affirm the individual’s gender identity.” Wash.Rev.Code

§74.09.675(3). This includes physical or mental health services,

id. §70.02.010(15), including “[f]acial feminization surgeries”;

“facial gender-affirming treatment”; “tracheal shaves, hair

electrolysis,” “mastectomies, breast reductions, breast implants,

or any combination of gender-affirming procedures,” id.

§74.09.675(2)(b).

3 Children run away for a host of reasons unrelated to abuse or

neglect. Running Away, Nemours KidsHealth (June 2018),

https://tinyurl.com/5n6vjpev (medically reviewed by Steven

Dowshen, MD).

suffering from gender dysphoria as per se neglectful or

abusive and does not require the shelter to contact

them.” App.38a (VanDyke, J., dissenting).

As explained below, the FRA amendments harm

Petitioners in at least four distinct ways: (1) parents

are denied the right to consent to or refuse treatment

for their child, including gender transition; (2) notice

to parents is now denied or at least significantly

delayed; (3) if given notice, parents are not informed

about their child’s condition and location; and (4) the

child’s return is significantly to indefinitely delayed.

Parents are bypassed in their child’s

treatment.

The FRA amendments remove from parental

control important choices about a child’s treatment.

Those amendments now require DCYF itself to “[o]ffer

to make referrals on behalf of the minor for

appropriate

behavioral

health

services,”

Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(3)(b)(i) (2023), “which

can include ‘gender-affirming’ treatment,” App.53a

(Tung, J., dissenting). 4

Legislative history—which under Washington

law is highly relevant to the interpretation of state

4 When the child receives such treatment, the state then restricts

the parents’ rights to access the child’s mental health “treatment

records.” Wash.Rev.Code §71.24.025(42) (App.K); §71.34.430

(App.L) (limiting disclosure to parents); §70.02.240 (App.I)

(limiting parent’s access to a minor’s records, except under

prescribed circumstances); §70.02.265 (App.J) (allowing therapist

to deny parents access).

statutes 5—confirms that the legislature intended to

displace a child’s parents and authorize “genderaffirming treatment” for runaway minors seeking

“protected health services.” As Judge Tung put it, “[i]n

the legislature’s view, a child suffering from gender

dysphoria must be ‘protected’ from parents who do not

seek ‘gender-affirming treatment’ for their child and

do not ‘affirm’ the child’s gender identity.” App.52a.

Judge Tung’s observation is validated by the

legislative debates, where proponents of the

amendments frequently framed “non-affirming”

parents, like Petitioners, as the problem SB5599 was

designed to solve. For example, Washington Senator

Liias, an SB5599 sponsor, explained during his bill’s

legislative hearing:

What this bill speaks to is when a young

person is [among other things] seeking

gender-affirming care in the face of opposition

and hostility from their family. In those cases

where that reunification process would

separate that vulnerable young person from

the health care that they’re entitled to ***[,]

[w]hen a family is standing between their

young person and essential health care

services ***[,] we need to focus on the

essential needs of a young person—insure

they’re getting the care they deserve ***.

5 In re Marriage of Kovacs, 854 P.2d 629, 634, 636 (Wash. 1993)

(“[I]n determining the legislative purpose and intent the court

may look beyond the language of the Act to legislative history

[and] the remarks of *** sponsor[s] and drafter[s] of *** bill[s],

are appropriately considered to determine th[at] purpose[.]”).

Senate Floor Debate on SB5599 (Mar. 1, 2023)

(statement of Sen. Liias, Sponsor, at 1:24:48-1:26:00

(emphasis added)), https://tinyurl.com/75jaep4t (click

“start video”) (“Liias Statement”).

Similarly, on the House floor, Representative

Taylor described the bill’s purpose as saving kids from

their parents:

I just want to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that

we’re talking about children who are not in

this room hearing really encouraging

language from their parents. It’s the ***

words that are constantly told—“you cannot

be uniquely you. You cannot be something

other than what I desire for you to be. And if

you do not follow my rules *** I’m not even

gonna give you the safety, the comfort that

you so desire when you want to be uniquely

you.” *** [So w]e must step in. We must

provide a place for this child.

House Floor Debate on SB5599 (Apr. 12, 2023)

(statement of Rep. Taylor, at 1:42:32-1:45:03),

https://tinyurl.com/4wdbhape (click “start video”)

(“Taylor Statement”).

Senator Trudeau, another supporter of the bill,

similarly declared:

[W]e know the statistics when it comes to

suicide, when it comes to, you know,

homelessness, when it comes to other issues

that disproportionately impact trans youth. It

is a result of rejection by their family, by the

lack of love and support that’s shown. And so

I think that we all have, we would love to

know that every family is a family that

supports their children. But Mr. President,

that just isn’t the case. *** Many families

don’t. And for the kids that come from those

families, they deserve the support and love as

well[.]

SB5599 Senate Floor Debate (statement of Sen.

Trudeau, at 1:55:08-1:56:46) (“Trudeau Statement”).

And Governor Inslee, whose signature made the

FRA amendments law, confirmed that the

amendments “support these youth as they access

gender-affirming treatment[.]” Associated Press,

Trans Minors Protected from Parents under

Washington Law, KNKX Pub. Radio (May 9, 2023),

https://tinyurl.com/ynyfm7s6. Never mind that many

of these services have potentially life-altering,

harmful consequences—including sterilization.

Of course, nothing in the statute requires any

finding that parents kicked a child out of the home or

committed any other neglect or abuse to trigger the

various infringements on parental prerogatives that

the FRA amendments authorize. Yet the state has

decided that, if a gender-confused child runs away, the

parents are to be displaced because, according to

Senator Trudeau, the parents cannot love and support

the child the way the state says they should.

Indeed, the only reason to add a minor “seeking

or receiving gender-affirming treatment” to the

definition of “compelling reasons” was to take children

whose parents would not consent to “gender-affirming

treatment” and refer those children to “affirming”

behavioral health services. Previously, absent a

finding of abuse or neglect, DCYF could not reach out

and refer a child for any “behavioral health services”—

including “gender-affirming treatment.” Thus, the

new law provided the state with authority—and

additional time—to provide this treatment to the child

in the face of parental opposition.

In sum, the amended FRA now allows the state,

over parents’ objections or without their knowledge, to

provide “gender-affirming” medical care to a child.

This care can send a minor down a road of “genderaffirming treatment” that could cause irreversible

sterilization and sexual dysfunction, as well as other

devastating physical and psychological consequences

to the child and serious harm to the parent-child

relationship. That’s because “gender affirming”

behavioral health services are more likely to lead a

child to additional interventions—including medical

and surgical treatments. 6 So the amended FRA has

6 See generally Declaration, Doctors Protecting Children (June 6,

2024), https://tinyurl.com/ycy8xzet. Moreover, even if “behavioral

health services” were interpreted to mean only mental therapy,

the damage can be long-lasting or permanent. By referring minor

children to counseling that affirms they are something other than

their biological sex, DCYF is likely cementing—perhaps for a

lifetime—a confusion that most children would otherwise mature

out of, all without parental knowledge or consent. Indeed, the

evidence shows that over 80% of gender-confused children

overcome that confusion and identify with their biological sex

after puberty if that gender confusion is not affirmed. Kenneth J.

Zucker, The myth of persistence: response to “A critical

commentary on follow-up studies and ‘desistance’ theories about

transgender and gender nonconforming children” by Temple

Newhook et al. (2018), 19 Int’l J. Transgenderism 231, 232, 237

(2018); Riittakerttu Kaltiala-Heino et al., Gender Dysphoria in

Adolescence: Current Perspectives, 9 Adolesc. Health Med.

changed the status quo in a way that curtails parental

prerogatives—and harms children.

Notice to parents is denied or delayed.

To make matters worse, the statute’s plain

language also exempts from the prompt parentalnotice requirement those cases in which minors are

seeking or receiving “protected health care” services

and provides no period for notifying parents or

obtaining their consent before referring the minor for

such services.

Paragraph 3 determines DCYF’s actions now that

licensed shelters are forbidden from notifying parents

of a runaway gender-confused minor under the new

definition of “compelling reasons.” 7 While Paragraph

3(a) is general to any notice given to DCYF regardless

of “compelling reasons,” Paragraph 3(b) is specific to

minors seeking “gender-affirming treatment.” While

both require plans for reunification, Paragraph 3(b)

Therapeutics 31, 33 (2018) (approximately 4 of every 5 minor

children with gender dysphoria see it resolve, ultimately

accepting their biological sex, if not affirmed as the opposite sex),

https://tinyurl.com/ppyhuemr; App.91a,¶108. Thus, referring

gender-confused children to “gender-affirming treatment” puts

them on the path to life-altering medical interventions,

Declaration ¶5, interventions Parent Petitioners oppose for their

children..

7 The panel mistakenly read “compelling reasons” to mean “the

shelter may forego contacting the child’s parents and contact

[DCYF] instead.” App7a. (emphasis added). But the statute

clearly states that if “compelling reasons” exist, the shelter “must

instead notify [DCYF].” App.184a-185a (emphasis added). Still,

merely lodging that decision in the shelter rather than the child’s

parents would itself threaten parents’ ability to raise their

children as they see fit.

provides no timeline for the provision of the

reconciliation and reunification services listed

therein. 8 Compare Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(3)(a)

(2023) with (3)(b).

If there were any doubt as to Paragraph 3(b)’s

controlling the notice requirements, or lack thereof, to

Petitioner Parents, a review of the legislative history

confirms Petitioners’ interpretation. That history

confirms that the Washington Legislature intended to

deprive parents of their parental rights when their

child runs away to receive “gender-affirming

treatment.”

As legal counsel for the Committee that produced

the legislation explained, “Under this bill, they [i.e.,

shelter or DCYF personnel] do not need to contact the

parent if a compelling reason exists—which includes

but is not limited to notifying the parent will subject

the minor to child abuse and neglect or the minor is

seeking protected health care services.” Hearing on

SB5599 Before S. Hum. Servs. Comm., 68th Leg., Reg.

Sess. (Wash. 2023) (emphasis added) (statement of

Alison Mendiola, Coordinator & Counsel for Comm., at

28:44-29:03 (Feb. 6, 2023)), https://tinyurl.com/

3kr8h7ju (click “view video”). Remarkably, then,

8 Interpreting

Paragraphs 3(a) and 3(b) as overlapping would

violate “the rule against surplusage, which requires [a] court to

avoid interpretations of a statute that would render superfluous

a[ny] provision” thereof. Veit ex rel. Nelson v. Burlington N. Santa

Fe Corp., 249 P.3d 607, 620 (Wash. 2011). And since “a specific

provision controls over one that is general in nature,” Miller v.

Sybouts, 645 P.2d 1082, 1084 (Wash. 1982), the redundancies and

potential conflicts disappear by applying Paragraph 3(b) to all

minors seeking “gender-affirming treatment” and Paragraph 3(a)

to all other minors who trigger “compelling reasons.”

under the text and legislative history of SB5599,

DCYF is not required to notify parents of children

seeking or receiving protected health services of their

child’s location or welfare.

DCYF policy further confirms this reading. A

Policy Memo issued two days before the FRA

Amendments went into effect asserts that, in

implementing SB5599 regarding a homeless youth

seeking “gender-affirming treatment,” a caseworker

must “[m]ake a good faith attempt to contact the

youth’s parent[.]” Policy Memo from Natalie Green,

Asst. Sec’y, and Steve Grilli, Asst. Sec’y of

Partnership, Prevention & Servs., Wash. Dep’t of

Child., Youth & Fams., Changes to 3100, Family

Reconciliation Services Policy 2 (July 21, 2023),

https://tinyurl.com/y42r6v63.

The

Memo

then

specifies that for “a good faith attempt, caseworkers

must at minimum *** [a]sk the youth or shelter to

provide contact information for the youth’s parents

***, if known,” and, “[c]ontact the parents *** if

contact information is provided.” Id. (emphasis added).

The only other effort to contact parents is if there was

a prior child welfare report with parental information;

otherwise, no notification will be provided parents.

The law requires no independent efforts to identify

and notify parents. Furthermore, if initial contact is

unsuccessful—say, because the child refuses to

provide contact information or a correct name—the

minor may stay in the shelter for as many as 90 days.

App.185a. There is no guarantee when or if a parent

will learn the fate of their runaway child who claims

to be receiving

treatment.” 9

seeking

“gender

affirming

Even if provided notice, parents are not

told about their child’s condition or

location.

Even if Subsection 3(a) is read to apply to parents

of runaway minors seeking or receiving protected

health services, the statutory changes also reduce the

detail provided to parents. Previously, absent abuse or

neglect, the shelter would provide the child’s location,

condition, and circumstances upon arrival at the

shelter. Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) (2013).

But the FRA amendments removed that requirement

for a minor seeking “protected health care service.” All

DCYF must provide now is notice that it received a

report from a shelter. Id. §13.32A.082(3)(a) (2023).

Thus, parents will not know their child’s location or

condition.

This amendment thus targets and deprives

certain parents—for whom there is no suspicion of

neglect or abuse—including Petitioners here, of crucial

knowledge about their child and the ability to

promptly reunite with their child.

9 Even if Subsection 3(a) were read to apply to everyone covered

under Subsection 3(b), the FRA amendments still significantly

delay parental notice. At minimum, the FRA Amendments

change the notification time from seventy-two hours to as many

as ten days, depending on the timing of weekends and holidays,

by adding three business days—an eternity for parents of a

runaway child. Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) (2023).

At best, then, the timing of parental notification is doubled or

tripled. And at worst, no notification is required.

A child’s return is significantly delayed.

Finally, the FRA amendments significantly delay

the parent-child reunification—thereby entrenching

any “gender-affirming” care the child might receive.

Parents of a runaway child will not know the child’s

location, and these statutory changes do not require

DCYF to return the child on any specific timeline. All

Subsection 3(b)(ii) requires is for DCYF—at some

unspecified time—to “[o]ffer services designed to

resolve the conflict and accomplish a reunification of

the family.” Wash.Rev.Code §13.32A.082(3)(b)(ii)

(2023). 10 But until that “conflict” is resolved—to

DCYF’s satisfaction—reunification is not required,

meaning the Department has no mandate to return

the child. In short, the law no longer requires DCYF to

accomplish reunification within three days but need

only offer reunification services whenever it wishes.

Ibid. 11

10 The state argued below that 3(b) applies to runaway children,

and thus reunification services must be offered within three days,

excluding weekends and holidays. Answer.Br. 9. Yet even if that

strained reading were correct, but see supra n.8 and related

legislative history, the “good faith” limitation means many

parents will never be contacted. And even if they are, the statute

provides no timeline for actual reunification, nor the conditions

for reunification, which are left to DCYF.

11 The state argued below that “DCYF policy also directs that its

caseworkers must contact the family within twenty-four hours of

being assigned the case, excluding weekends and holidays, to

schedule an interview and assessment.” Answer.Br. 7. But the

state did not and does not say how quickly a case must be

“assigned,” nor does scheduling an interview and assessment

mean reunification.

Here again, the legislative history supports this

reading. As explained above, Senator Liias, a cosponsor, essentially said the law is for providing

minors care and then worrying about reunification

later. Liias Statement, supra. In other words, DCYF

can provide the services it thinks the child needs

without parental consent, and it need not attempt

reunification until after it has offered and provided

those services to the child.

***

As Judge Tung put it, Washington “law thus

places *** parents[] who wish to raise their child in

accordance with the child’s biological sex[] in the same

category as parents who are abusive or neglectful.

Both categories of parents lose any entitlement to be

notified of their runaway child’s location.” App.52a.

And “Washington’s regulatory regime *** now

systematically facilitates the covert transitioning of

children without parental knowledge or consent.”

App.37a (VanDyke, J., dissenting). Indeed, “the law

appears designed to *** prevent parents from

reuniting with their child (unless they ‘affirm’ the

child’s gender identification) and to clear the path of

obstacles for the child to receive ‘gender-affirming’

treatment.” App.53a (Tung, J., dissenting) (emphasis

added).

Factual Background

As outlined above, and as Petitioners pleaded in

detail in their amended complaint (App.D), they are

facing substantial injury from the challenged

statutes—both currently and in the near future.

Petitioner Parents are not just concerned citizens with

mere ideological or policy concerns with the FRA

amendments. These are parents whose lives and

families are currently harmed, as well as deeply

threatened, by the challenged statutes as they care for

and raise children dealing with gender confusion.

For example, four of the Petitioner Parent couples

have children who struggle with gender confusion

(with most of those children being secretly

transitioned

their

public

schools).

App.70a,72a,73a,76a-77a. None of the Petitioner

Parents are willing to affirm that gender confusion.

App.72a,73a,75a,77a. Furthermore, one of those

couples has a gender-confused child who previously

ran away. App.77a. And there have been threats by

others to take two of these couples’ gender-confused

children to another place to be “affirmed.”

App.72a,74a-75a,¶¶24,38. These parents thus alleged

that the Washington laws at issue create a substantial

future risk that the state (in response to a child’s

running away from home) will facilitate a gender

transition contrary to the parents’ wishes. App.70a73a,75a,77a. And that is an enormous intrusion into

parental prerogatives.

Additionally, because of daily fear that their child

will run away to get the “gender-affirming care” the

parents reject, App.71a, some of the parents have felt

compelled to alter their current parenting. For

instance, Parent 1A has hesitated to discipline her

child for fear it will cause a rift that others (including

homeless shelters) might take advantage of to

facilitate a gender transition—thus making it difficult

to parent. App.71a,¶16. And “[b]ecause of the FRA

amendments, Parent 2A *** does not use [her

daughter’s] given name in public or use any pronouns

when referring to her, with the exception of her

current (new) school community or extended family.”

App.73a,¶¶26-28. Likewise, to minimize the risk that

their gender-confused minor daughter will run away

to a shelter, Parents 2A and 2B avoid any discussion

of gender with or even near her. App.73a. 12

Procedural History

Petitioners sued about three weeks after the laws

went into effect and filed their first amended

complaint on November 6, 2023. App.66a.

Approximately six months later, the case was

reassigned to a different judge. One day later, with no

oral argument, the new judge granted Defendants’

motion to dismiss with prejudice, holding that

Petitioners lacked Article III standing. App.28a-31a.

The district court’s standing analysis totaled ten,

mostly conclusory, sentences. App.30a-31a.

12 Petitioner

International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. also

has standing. Its mission is “to stop the unethical treatment of

children *** by schools, hospitals, and mental and medical

healthcare providers under the duplicitous banner of gender

identity affirmation.” Home, Partners for Ethical Care,

https://tinyurl.com/4nrp5vn9 (last visited Jan. 7, 2026). The

organization’s members include approximately two dozen

parents in Washington, at least one of which has a minor child

who experiences gender confusion, has received counseling for

such confusion, and is at risk of running away. App.69a,¶9.

Petitioner Advocates Protecting Children is “dedicated to fighting

the gender industry, and especially its predation on children in

the form of unethical social and medical transition for the sake of

political and financial profit.” About Us, Advocates Protecting

Children, https://tinyurl.com/3kun8vf2 (last visited Jan. 7, 2026).

The Ninth Circuit affirmed. App.4a-5a. The panel

held that Petitioners lack standing because (1) any

current altering of parenting in response to the

Washington laws is a “self-inflicted injury,” (2) the

laws does not directly regulate the parents’ speech,

and (3) standing based on probabilistic harm requires

immediate injury even when the feared injury is

drastic. App.14a-25a. Moreover, Petitioners urged in

their opening brief (p. 66) and during oral argument

(and in their complaint, App.94a) that the challenged

laws target the Petitioners. And they raised Diamond

Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA, 606 U.S. 100, 111

(2025), in a Rule 28(j) letter well before the panel’s

decision came out. But the panel ignored Diamond and

Petitioners’ showing that they have Article III

standing as objects of the law.

Petitioners

unsuccessfully

petitioned

for

rehearing and rehearing en banc. App.32a-34a. But in

dissent from denial, Judge VanDyke, joined by Judge

Bumatay, showed that the panel conflicted with the

Fifth Circuit and with this Court in refusing to find

standing based on the current injury to the parental

right to bring up a child, and because the parents were

the objects of the challenged statutes. App.34a-51a.

And Judge Tung, joined by Judges Bumatay and

VanDyke, also showed that Petitioners had alleged a

sufficient risk of future injury for standing, and that

the panel’s decision conflicted with this Court and

with other circuits. App.51a-65a.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

In holding that Petitioners lacked standing, the

Ninth Circuit conflicted with multiple precedents of

this Court and with multiple circuits, on what

members of this Court have called “a question of great

and growing national importance.” Parents Protecting,

145 S.Ct. at 14 (Alito, J., dissenting). As these Justices

observed, standing doctrine is becoming an excuse for

some federal courts to avoid what they perceive as

contentious constitutional questions. Ibid. And this

petition presents a clean and simple vehicle for

deciding the issue of parental standing to challenge

governmental actions designed to facilitate children’s

gender transitions.

As Multiple Justices Have Recognized, the

Question Presented Is “of Great and

Growing National Importance.”

At least three Justices agree that the issue

presented in this petition is a “question of great and

growing national importance.” Parents Protecting, 145

S.Ct. at 14 (Alito, J., dissenting). In his dissent in

Parents Protecting, Justice Alito, joined by Justice

Thomas, declared that “when, without parental

knowledge or consent, [the government] encourages a

[minor] to transition to a new gender or assists in that

process,” the issue of parental standing “presents a

question of great and growing national importance.”

Ibid. That is exactly the situation here.

In that case, moreover, Justices Alito and Thomas

noted the lower court’s “questionable understanding of

Clapper [v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398

(2013),] and related standing decisions”—where the

lower court held that parents lacked standing to

challenge

government

policy

facilitating

transitioning without parental knowledge or consent.

Parents Protecting, 145 S.Ct. at 14. These Justices

expressed concern “that some federal courts are

succumbing to the temptation to use the doctrine of

Article III standing as a way of avoiding some

particularly contentious constitutional questions.” Id.

at 14-15. And as important as it is to “heed the limits

of [courts’] constitutional authority,” it is “equally

important” that courts “carry out their ‘virtually

unflagging obligation *** to exercise the jurisdiction

given them.’” Id. at 15 (quoting Colorado River Water

Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 817

(1976)).

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas and

Justice Gorsuch, reiterated these concerns in Lee v.

Poudre School District R-1, 607 U.S.--, 2025 WL

2906469 (2025) (statement respecting denial of

certiorari). There these Justices emphasized their

“concern[] that some federal courts are ‘tempted’ to

avoid confronting a ‘particularly contentious

constitutional question’: whether [the government]

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.’” Id. at *1 (cleaned up) (quoting Parents

Protecting, 145 S.Ct. at 14 (Alito, J., dissenting)).

These Justices also noted that government

entities with “policies *** that purposefully interfere

with parents’ access to critical information about their

children’s gender-identity choices and [government]

personnel’s involvement in and influence on those

choices” are both “troubling *** and tragic.” Ibid. And

they viewed the question presented by petitioners—

“[w]hether [the government] may discard the

presumption that fit parents act in the best interests

of their children and arrogate to itself the right to

direct the care, custody, and control of their children,”

Pet. at i, Lee v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1, No. 25-89 (U.S.

July 21, 2025)—as a question of “great and growing

national importance.” Lee, 2025 WL 2906469, *1

(quoting Parents Protecting, 145 S.Ct. at 14 (Alito, J.,

dissenting)).

That same concern—misreading the Court’s

“standing decisions” to “avoid[] [the] particularly

contentious constitutional questions” of whether the

state can encourage or assist the gender transitioning

of minors “without parental knowledge or consent”—

is the fundamental problem here. Parents Protecting,

145 S.Ct. at 14-15 (Alito, J., dissenting); see also Lee,

2025 WL 2906469, *1 (Alito, J., statement). And that

concern is especially salient here given that the lower

courts held that the very parents targeted, harmed,

and placed in jeopardy for future harm by the

challenged laws lack standing to sue.

Additionally, resolving the standing issue here

will provide guidance to dozens of suits around the

country in the closely related context of school policies

designed to secretly transition children. More than

1,200 districts, covering 21,000 schools and twelve

million children, maintain those policies. 13

13 List

of School District Transgender Gender Nonconforming

Student Policies, Parents Defending Educ., https://bit.ly/4aiLjPW

(updated Apr. 21, 2025).

As Justice Alito has observed elsewhere, “Article

III standing is an important component of our

Constitution’s structural design,” and “[t]hat doctrine

is cheapened when the rules are not evenhandedly

applied.” Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 98 (2024)

(Alito, J., dissenting). This Court’s review is necessary

to avoid this “troubling *** and tragic” national trend.

Lee, 2025 WL 2906469, *1 (Alito, J., statement).

II. In Denying Standing to Parent Plaintiffs,

the Ninth Circuit Deviated from This

Court’s and Other Circuits’ Standing

Precedent.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision has also created

numerous conflicts with this Court and other circuits’

standing precedent, both regarding current and future

injuries, as well as regarding scenarios where

plaintiffs are the statute’s object. Any of these

necessitate granting the petition, but taken together,

they overwhelmingly call for this Court’s review.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s precedent on standing

when the plaintiff is the object of the

statute in question.

The decision below conflicts first with decisions of

this Court on standing requirements when plaintiffs

are effectively the object of the challenged law.

1. In Diamond Alternative Energy, this Court

held that fuel producers, as non-regulated third

parties, had standing to challenge the EPA’s approval

of California regulations requiring automakers in the

future to manufacture more electric and fewer

gasoline-powered vehicles. 606 U.S. at 104-105. In so

holding, Diamond observed that “[t]he fuel producers

here might be considered an object of the California

regulations,” by analogizing to Pierce v. Society of the

Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), where “a State prohibited

parents from sending their children to private schools,

[yet, the] affected schools had standing to sue, even

though parents were the directly regulated parties.”

Diamond, 606 U.S. at 114-115. That was because,

“when a regulation targets the provider of a product or

service by limiting another entity’s use of that product

or service, the targeted provider ordinarily has

standing—without the need for much additional

analysis.” Id. at 115.

The parallels here are obvious: Through laws

governing shelters and DCYF, Washington impacts

parents whose children are directly subject to the laws’

effects. App.83a-97a,¶¶84-119. Thus, even though

these laws do not regulate parents directly, parents of

gender-confused children clearly (at a minimum)

“might be considered an object of the [Washington]

regulations.” Diamond, 606 U.S. at 114. See also

App.57a (Tung, J., dissenting) (“[A]s the objects of the

challenged Washington law, the parents have

standing to sue.”).

2. As detailed above, the legislative history bears

that out. During legislative debates, the laws’

proponents frequently framed non-“affirming” parents

as the problem the laws were designed to solve, thus

giving the parents standing. On the Senate floor, for

example, Sponsor Senator Liias referred to the

“opposition and hostility from their family” that

children seeking these services would face and how “a

family is standing between their young person and

essential health care services.” Liias Statement,

supra. Representative Taylor likewise described the

bill’s purpose as ensuring that the state “must step in”

because some children do not get what they need from

their parents. Taylor Statement supra. Senator

Trudeau similarly declared that the bill was for “trans

youth” who are “reject[ed] by their family.” Trudeau

Statement, supra. These statements make clear that,

as in Diamond, parents are the “problem” the laws

here target. App.57a (Tung, J., dissenting) (noting

that here the challenged law’s “object is to ‘protect’

runaway children with gender dysphoria from their

parents who might hinder their desired treatment.

Those parents are the clear ‘targets’ of the law”);

Diamond, 606 U.S. at 116 (observing that “the

government might seek to indirectly target a product

or service ‘through a conduit’ in addition to regulating

it directly”).

And Diamond acknowledged as “not without

force” the point that “when a regulation targets the

provider of a product or service by limiting another

entity’s use of that product or service, the targeted

provider ordinarily has standing—without the need

for much additional analysis.” Id. at 115-116. So too

here: Washington’s

regulations

target

“nonaffirming” parenting (with parenting being a service

parents provide to children and the State) by limiting

the use of that service by parents. Thus, as the

“targeted provider,” Petitioners have standing just as

the fuel producers did in Diamond. See also App.58a

(Tung, J., dissenting) (“The panel contravenes

Supreme Court *** precedent by failing to properly

analyze *** whether the parents are the objects of the

challenged law that would give rise to standing ***.

See *** Diamond Alt. Energy, 606 U.S. at 114 (“‘object’

of a government regulation”); Lujan [v. Defenders of

Wildlife], 504 U.S. [555,] 561-62 [(1992)] (“object of the

action”).”).

3. Additionally, the Diamond Court determined

that, even if a third party isn’t itself regulated,

“government regulation of a [different party] may be

likely to cause injuries to other linked [parties].” 606

U.S. at 116 (cleaned up). Thus, the Court concluded

that regulating automobile manufacturers by

requiring them to produce fewer gasoline-powered

vehicles “may be likely” to injure fuel producers as

fewer vehicles need the producers’ product. Id. at 115117.

Likewise, here: By requiring shelters and DCYF

to bypass parents as to Petitioners’ children, the

Washington laws injure Petitioners sufficiently to

create Article III standing. If anything, the injury here

is more direct than in Diamond since parents are not

downstream from shelters but are in a sense direct

“competitors” in providing care for their children.

4. Nor did it matter in Diamond that the fuel

producers’ injuries would not materialize for years and

required a series of steps by several parties to produce

the injury. It was enough that “[i]nvalidating the

regulations likely (not certainly, but likely) would

make a difference for fuel producers because

automakers would likely manufacture more vehicles

that run on gasoline and other liquid fuels.” Id. at 118

(emphasis added).

Hence, it does not matter here, as the Ninth

Circuit thought, that “Plaintiffs do not allege that

these [concerning] events have transpired, and *** fail

to provide ‘concrete’ details or ‘specification of when’

they might occur.” App.22a (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at

564). Those considerations did not matter in Diamond

and do not control here.

5. Relatedly, Diamond relied on “commonsense

economic inferences about the operation of the

automobile market” to predict a sufficient likelihood of

future harm for standing. 606 U.S. at 120. Here too,

common-sense inferences about children’s behavior

can be drawn to the same effect. Any parent knows

that children respond to incentives and will continue

to seek what they want unless completely (and usually

repeatedly) foreclosed from their desire. This is

evident when one parent tells a child “No,” so the child

runs to the other parent with the same request.

And that is what we have here—the law tells

children that, if their parents will not allow “genderaffirming services,” the state will provide those

“services” if a child just shows up at a shelter and

requests them. Commonsense in child behavior thus

must play a role in the standing analysis, as this Court

made clear in Diamond—and the panel ignored.

App.56a (Tung, J., dissenting) (“[T]he incentive that

Washington law has created for gender-dysphoric

children to run away to licensed shelters is also

enough to confer standing.”).

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s and Fifth Circuit

precedent on standing when state law

interferes with parents’ current ability

to make critical decisions for their

children.

The panel’s decision also conflicts with this

Court’s precedent and at least with the Fifth Circuit

in failing to recognize that “the real harm to parents

from Washington’s legal regime happens long before a

child runs away”—because “intentional interference

with the parent-child relationship, be it direct or

indirect, creates an injury to the fundamental right to

parent.” App.44a-45a (VanDyke, J., dissenting) (citing

Troxel, 530 U.S. at 75). See also Parham v. J. R., 442

U.S. 584, 610 (1979) (“Pitting the parents and child as

adversaries often will be at odds with the presumption

that parents act in the best interests of their child.”);

Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U.S. 246, 255 (1978) (“We have

recognized on numerous occasions that the

relationship

between

parent

and

child

constitutionally protected.”).

1. As Judge VanDyke pointed out, the panel

“fundamentally misunderstood the nature of parental

rights by concluding that the plaintiff parents have

only alleged ‘self-inflicted injuries’ in describing how

Washington’s legal regime has chilled and interfered

with their parenting.” App.44a. And he noted the

conflict not only with this Court, but with the Fifth

Circuit in Deanda v. Becerra, 96 F.4th 750 (5th Cir.

2024). App.45a-57a.

There, a parent sued over funding for programs

that provided contraceptives to minors without

parental consent. Deanda, 96 F.4th at 754-755. The

parent argued that funding the offering of

contraceptives to his child without his consent

transgressed “his constitutional right to direct his

children’s upbringing.” Id. at 755. Because the parent

never alleged his child had received any

contraceptives from the funded programs, nor that his

children were at a heightened risk of such, the

government defendant argued that the parent lacked

standing because he hadn’t suffered an injury. Id. at

759.

The Fifth Circuit rejected this standing

argument, holding that the plaintiff’s “parental right[]

to notice and consent” was infringed solely by the fact

that the challenged programs existed and bypassed

parental consent. Ibid. In other words, the programs

“nullif[ied] [plaintiff’s] parental rights” and thus he

had standing “because the Secretary [sought] to

preempt his *** right to consent to his children’s

obtaining contraceptives.” Id. at 759-760.

As Judge VanDyke observed, “Deanda’s

reasoning maps neatly onto this case” as “[t]here’s no

reasonable dispute that Washington’s legal regime

intentionally allows for and encourages minors to seek

and obtain gender transition services over the

objections of fit parents.” App.47a. Further, “[t]here’s

also no reasonable dispute that fit parents have a

constitutional right to make major health decisions on

behalf of their minor children.” Ibid. Thus, the Ninth

and Fifth Circuits are now in conflict.

2. This Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor,

606 U.S. 522 (2025), also highlights the need for

granting the petition. Mahmoud refused to require

parents to take a “wait and see” approach to the

infringement of their constitutional rights. Id. at 559560. Likewise, the parents here should not have to

wait for the state to take possession of their child and

refer the child for “treatments” the parents oppose

before the parents can file suit.

Further, the fact that parents in Mahmoud would

be kept in the dark mattered to the Court because “it

is not clear how the [lower court] expects the parents

to obtain specific information about” the future injury

when the “Board has stated that it will not notify

parents” beforehand. Id. at 560. Judge Tung echoed

this point below: “The parents should not have to wait

until their child has run away to a shelter and received

life-altering treatment before they are afforded the

opportunity to challenge the law—a law whose very

object is to prevent the parents from knowing *** of

their child’s arrival at the shelter and his or her receipt

of ‘gender-affirming’ treatment.” App.55a.

3. While it is not clear when or if any of

Petitioners’ gender-confused children will run away

(again), triggering direct application of the challenged

laws, they certainly incentivize Petitioners’ children to

do so. App.56a (Tung, J., dissenting) (“[T]he incentive

that Washington law has created for gender-dysphoric

children to run away to licensed shelters is also

enough to confer standing.”). That—and the reality

that Petitioners must now hamper their parenting due

to that incentive, see App.71a-73a—is sufficient to

confer standing.

Petitioners must have standing to challenge these

laws before irreversible harm befalls their children.

App.55a (Tung, J., dissenting) (“By that time, it may

be too late to rehabilitate (in the parents’ view) the

damage done to their child.”). After all, children rarely

give advance notice of their intent to run away.

In sum, as Judge VanDyke put it, “[s]o long as

Washington encourages minors to take the plunge into

gender transitions without the knowledge (or even

over the objection) of fit parents, parents lose their

ability to direct the care and upbringing of their

children, regardless of whether [the challenged laws’]

sword of Damocles ever falls on that particular

parent.” App.48a.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts

with this Court’s and other circuits’

precedent on Article III standing arising

from threat of future injury.

The panel’s holding that Petitioners lack standing

under probabilistic injury doctrine also conflicts with

this Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549

U.S. 497 (2007), and with other circuit courts. This

Court recognizes that probabilistic harm can satisfy

standing’s injury-in-fact requirement on a sliding

scale, depending on the likelihood and seriousness of

the potential injury. Thus, “[t]he more drastic the

injury that government action makes more likely, the

lesser the increment in probability to establish

standing.” Id. at 525 n.23 (cleaned up). Hence, “[e]ven

a small probability of injury is sufficient *** provided

of course that the relief sought would *** reduce the

probability.” Ibid. (cleaned up).

And in Massachusetts v. EPA, the alleged future

injury was that “a significant fraction of coastal

property will be either permanently lost through

inundation or temporarily lost through periodic storm

surge and flooding events.” Id. at 523 (cleaned up). As

to what “a significant fraction” means, the Court

observed that “global sea levels rose somewhere

between 10 and 20 centimeters over the 20th century

as a result of global warming.” Id. at 522. Hence, a

permanent loss of 4-8 inches, or a temporary loss of a

few feet of coastline were “significant harms.” Id. at

521-522. Applying this sliding scale, the imminence of

these alleged future harms only had to “increase over

the course of the next century.” Id. at 522-523.

The panel here discounted this binding precedent

for two reasons. First, it said the probabilistic harm

doctrine “does not replace the foundational rule that a

future injury must be imminent in order to satisfy the

injury-in-fact

requirement.”

App.23a

(citation

omitted).

Second,

the

panel

distinguished

Massachusetts v. EPA’s discussion of drastic injuries

allowing a lesser increment of probability for standing

because it occurred in the redressability portion of the

Court’s analysis. App.22a-23a. Both attempted

distinctions conflict with that decision, however, and

with other circuits.

1. Regarding imminence, Massachusetts v. EPA

did not deal with an imminent injury normally

understood: The alleged harm—“a precipitate rise in

sea levels”—was predicted to occur only within 93

years (“by the end of the century”). 549 U.S. at 521; see

also id. at 522-523 (noting the possibility of increased

injury “over the course of the next century”). True, this

Court referred to this as an “imminent” injury, but

under that definition of imminence, Petitioners more

than meet it.

Also, the panel here missed that, under

Massachusetts v. EPA, when “a litigant is vested with

a procedural right,” that litigant may “assert that

right without meeting all the normal standards for ***

immediacy.” Id. at 517-518 (cleaned up). As

Petitioners adequately alleged, App.126a-130a,¶¶215228, they possess the requisite procedural right under

the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Further, requiring a temporally immediate injury

rather than allowing that requirement to be satisfied

by a combination of probability and severity effectively

nullifies the probabilistic harm doctrine: Immediate

harm is, by itself, sufficient to satisfy injury in fact;

hence (under the panel’s reasoning) probabilistic harm

adds nothing to the analysis. Just as courts do not

interpret statutory language as superfluous, so too

courts should not interpret this Court’s standing

doctrine to be superfluous, as the Ninth Circuit did

here.

2. As to the argument that this Court’s slidingscale analysis occurred in its redressability discussion,

the panel again misread Massachusetts v. EPA,

ignored logic, and created a conflict with at least five

other circuits. True, at one point in Massachusetts v.

EPA, this Court’s discussion of “the enormity of the

potential consequences” of the probabilistic injury

occurs in its redressability analysis. 549 U.S. at 525 &

n.23. But this Court also discussed “[t]he severity” of

a potential future injury in its injury-in-fact analysis.

Id. at 522-523. This makes sense logically because

redressability (and causation) “are usually flip sides of

the same coin” with injury in fact. Diamond, 606 U.S.

at 111 (cleaned up). Evidence for one can prove the

other.

Moreover, this Court’s adoption of this slidingscale doctrine—that the more severe the injury, the

lower the probability of injury one must show—has

been placed under the injury-in-fact analysis in at

least five circuits. Public Citizen, Inc. v. National

Highway Traffic Safety Admin., 489 F.3d 1279, 1296

(D.C. Cir. 2007); Pisciotta v. Old Nat’l Bancorp, 499

F.3d 629, 634 & n.4 (7th Cir. 2007); Kerin v. Titeflex

Corp., 770 F.3d 978, 983 (1st Cir. 2014); Friends of the

Earth, Inc. v. Gaston Copper Recycling Corp., 204 F.3d

149, 160 (4th Cir. 2000) (en banc); Baur v. Veneman,

352 F.3d 625, 637 (2d Cir. 2003). By limiting this

sliding-scale doctrine to redressability alone, the panel

created a split with these circuits and this Court.

Contrary to the panel’s claim, moreover, Plaintiffs

are not contending that merely “because Plaintiffs

may someday be affected by the Statutes, Plaintiffs

should have standing to challenge the Statutes now.”

App.19a. Besides current harms, Plaintiffs articulated

numerous specific reasons that they are at substantial

risk of suffering additional and even greater future

injuries from the challenged laws. App.70a-77a,¶¶1158, & App.109a-135a (lose ability to refuse harmful

treatment for minor children, lose custody of child,

lose ability to raise child consistent with their faith,

being forced to affirm gender confusion for the state to

return one’s child, and permanent harm to the parentchild relationship). And those allegations are

sufficient under Massachusetts v. EPA and its circuit

progeny.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision reflects a

deeper confusion and conflict over the

proper standard applicable to a motion

to dismiss on standing.

The panel’s decision also reflects a deeper

confusion among the lower courts over the proper

pleading standard for Article III standing: How, if at

all, does the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard

apply in assessing standing on a motion to dismiss?

For example, the Second Circuit rejected the

Twombly/Iqbal standard for assessing standing at the

motion-to-dismiss stage. That Circuit did so because

“plausibility is not at issue at this point, *** we are

considering only Article III standing.” Ross v. Bank of

Am., N.A. (USA), 524 F.3d 217, 225 (2d Cir. 2008).

Thus, in that Circuit, the requirement that one

“‘[c]learly alleg[e]” facts demonstrating standing “is a

‘low[er] threshold’ than that for ‘sustaining a valid

cause of action.’” Harry v. Total Gas & Power N. Am.,

Inc., 889 F.3d 104, 110 (2d Cir. 2018) (quoting Ross,

524 F.3d at 222). Compare Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1)

(subject-matter jurisdictional defect) with Rule

12(b)(6) (pleading defect).

But several circuits disagree. For example, the

Seventh Circuit concluded that “the Twombly-Iqbal

facial plausibility requirement for pleading a claim is

incorporated into the standard for pleading subject

matter jurisdiction,” such as standing. Silha v. ACT,

Inc., 807 F.3d 169, 174 (7th Cir. 2015) (citation

omitted); see also Román-Oliveras v. Puerto Rico Elec.

Power Auth., 655 F.3d 43, 45 n.3, 49 (1st Cir. 2011); In

re Schering Plough Corp. Intron/Temodar Consumer

Class Action, 678 F.3d 235, 243-244 (3rd Cir. 2012);

Lane v. Halliburton, 529 F.3d 548, 557 (5th Cir. 2008);

Stalley v. Catholic Health Initiatives, 509 F.3d 517,

521 (8th Cir. 2007).

And recently, the Ninth Circuit likewise required

that “the complaint’s factual allegations of Article III

standing [be] found to be adequate under Iqbal” for the

case to survive a motion to dismiss. Jones v. L.A. Cent.

Plaza LLC, 74 F.4th 1053, 1058 (9th Cir. 2023); but

see Maya v. Centex Corp., 658 F.3d 1060, 1068 (9th

Cir. 2011) (“Twombly and Iqbal are ill-suited to

application in the constitutional standing context

because in determining whether plaintiff states a

claim under 12(b)(6), the court necessarily assesses

the merits of plaintiff’s case,” which is “distinct” from

“the threshold question of whether plaintiff has

standing.”).

To be sure, Petitioners meet either standard.

App.51a (VanDyke, J., dissenting) (“Plaintiffs

plausibly alleged that they are chilled in carrying out

this constitutionally protected duty[.]). But, as Judge

Tung suggested below, the confusion over the proper

standard may have caused the panel to improperly

“construe[] the parents’ allegations in the most

disfavorable light.” App.61a. For, as he put it, “[o]nly

by drawing inferences in favor of the State (rather

than the plaintiffs) could the panel conclude that

standing was lacking.” Ibid. And that contradicts the

motion-to-dismiss standard articulated by this Court,

see, e.g., Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175,

181 (2024), which requires that any inferences be

drawn in the plaintiff’s favor.

By granting the petition, this Court can provide

needed general guidance on the proper standard for

assessing standing at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

III. This is a Clean Vehicle for Deciding the

Question Presented.

There are no countervailing reasons for this Court

to deny review as the petition avoids the fact-intensive

scenarios often present when addressing standing in

the parental-rights context. And it does so for at least

two reasons.

First, this case was dismissed at the pleading

stage, before any discovery. Thus, to determine

whether Petitioners have standing, the Court need

only read the challenged laws and the amended

complaint, avoiding wading through an extensive

record.

Second, as Judge VanDyke noted, “public

education is probably the environment where gender

ideology most often runs up against parental rights.”

App.49a. But “that setting presents unique and factspecific considerations that have made appellate

review challenging to obtain,” App.49a, “limit[ing]

opportunities to squarely address a government’s

infringement on parental rights surrounding gender

ideology.” App.50a.

By contrast, “[t]his case presents no such issues.”

Ibid. Here, Petitioners’ standing “does not depend on

the factual nuances of how a school implements its

own informal guidance documents, which are subject

to change at a moment’s notice.” Ibid. Instead,

Petitioners “sue to enjoin the operation of several

statewide laws that Washington shelters are now

obligated to follow.” Ibid. This case is therefore an

especially clean vehicle with which to resolve the

standing question that several Justices have now

indicated a desire to address.

CONCLUSION

The Ninth Circuit determined that the very

objects or targets of the relevant statutes—parents

who do not wish to affirm their children’s gender

confusion—lack standing to challenge those statutes.

And it did so despite Petitioners’ alleging current

injuries to their ability to parent and the risk of

catastrophic future injuries to that ability, and despite

the requirement that these allegations must be taken

as true at the pleading stage. To paraphrase Hamlet,

“something is rotten” in standing doctrine when

parents who are the object of a “gender-transition” law

have to wait for the (likely) irreparable injury of their

child’s actual transition before they can sue. Only this

Court can excise the rot.

The petition should be granted.

Respectfully submitted,

GENE C. SCHAERR

Counsel of Record

EDWARD H. TRENT

HANNAH C. SMITH

JAMES C. PHILLIPS

SCHAERR | JAFFE LLP

1717 K Street NW

Suite 900

Washington, DC 20006

(202) 787-1060

gschaerr@schaerr-jaffe.com

GENE P. HAMILTON

NICHOLAS R. BARRY

IAN D. PRIOR

JAMES K. ROGERS

AMERICA FIRST LEGAL

FOUNDATION

611 Pennsylvania Ave S.E., #231

Washington, DC 20003

(202) 964-3721

Counsel for Petitioners

January 13, 2026

APPENDIX

TABLE OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX A:

Opinion, International Partners for

Ethical Care Inc. v. Robert Ferguson,

Governor, No. 24-3661 (9th Cir.),

July 25, 2025, Doc. 54 ............................................ 1a

APPENDIX B:

Order Granting Defendants’ Motion

to Dismiss First Amended Complaint,

International Partners for Ethical

Care, Inc. v. Jay Inslee, Governor of

Washington, No. 3:23-cv-05736-DGE

(W.D. Wash.), May 15, 2024, Doc. 50 .................. 28a

APPENDIX C:

Order, International Partners for Ethical

Care Inc. v. Robert Ferguson, Governor,

No. 24-3661 (9th Cir.), Dec. 5, 2025, Doc. 64 ...... 32a

APPENDIX D:

Verified First Amended Complaint with

Verifications, International Partners for

Ethical Care, Inc. v. Jay Inslee, Governor

of Washington, in his official capacity,

No. 3:23-cv-05736-DGE (W.D. Wash.),

Nov. 6, 2023, Docs. 34, 34-1 to 34-9 ..................... 66a

APPENDIX E:

U.S. Constitution art. III, § 2............................. 149a

iia

APPENDIX F:

Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5599,

68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted

as 2023 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 408

(effective July 23, 2023) ..................................... 151a

APPENDIX G:

Substitute House Bill 1406, 68th Leg.,

Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023), enacted as

2023 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 151

(effective July 23, 2023) ..................................... 167a

APPENDIX H:

Wash. Rev. Code §13.32A.082,

Providing shelter to minor--Requirement

to notify parent, law enforcement, or

department (effective July 23, 2023) ................ 184a

APPENDIX I:

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.240,

Mental health services--Minors--Permitted

disclosures (effective June 6, 2024) .................. 189a

APPENDIX J:

Wash. Rev. Code §70.02.265,

Adolescent behavioral health services-Disclosure of treatment information

and records—Restrictions and

requirements--Immunity from liability

(effective July 28, 2019) .................................... 195a

APPENDIX K:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.24.025,

Definitions (effective July 27, 2025)

[excerpted] .......................................................... 199a

iiia

APPENDIX L:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.430,

Release of adolescent’s mental health

information to parent without adolescent’s

consent (effective June 6, 2024) ........................ 200a

APPENDIX M:

Wash. Rev. Code §71.34.530 (1985),

Outpatient treatment of adolescent

(effective July 28, 2019) .................................... 201a

APPENDIX N:

Wash. Rev. Code §74.09.675(3) (2021),

Gender-affirming care services-Prohibited discrimination [excerpted] ............... 202a

Appendix A

Case: 24-3661, 07/25/2025, DktEntry: 54.1

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

INTERNATIONAL

PARTNERS FOR ETHICAL

CARE INC; ADVOCATES

PROTECTING CHILDREN;

PARENT 1A; PARENT 1B;

PARENT 2A; PARENT 2B;

PARENT 3A; PARENT 3B;

PARENT 4A; PARENT 4B;

PARENT 5A; PARENT 5B,

No. 24-3661

D.C. No.

3:23-cv-05736-DGE

OPINION

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

ROBERT FERGUSON,

Governor; NICK BROWN,

Attorney General of

Washington; TANA SENN,

Secretary of the Washington

Department of Children,

Youth, and Families, *

Defendants - Appellees.

* Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2), Robert Ferguson, Nick

Brown, and Tana Senn have been automatically substituted for

their predecessors—Jay Inslee, Robert Ferguson, and Ross

Hunter, respectively.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Washington

Robert J. Bryan, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted May 15, 2025

San Francisco, California

Filed July 25, 2025

Before: SIDNEY R. THOMAS, MILAN D.

SMITH, JR., and DANIEL A. BRESS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.

SUMMARY **

Article III Standing

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal,

for lack of Article III standing, of an action challenging

three Washington laws regulating the rights and

privileges of Washington minors seeking access to

mental health care and shelter services, particularly

minors who are transgender.

The panel held that plaintiffs, two national

organizations and five sets of parents whose children

have shown signs of gender dysphoria, had not pled

current or future injuries sufficient to confer standing.

First, the panel held that the individual plaintiffs

lacked standing based on current injuries because the

individual plaintiffs’ alleged injuries in constraining

their ability to parent, forcing them to censor their

speech, and limiting their access to relevant

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

information about their children are not cognizable

under Article III.

Second, the panel held that the individual

plaintiffs lacked standing based on future injuries.

The panel rejected the individual plaintiffs’ suggestion

that, because they have minor children who

experience gender dysphoria and socially transitioned

at school, “one may infer that at least one child is likely

to run away in the future” and therefore come within

reach of the challenged laws. The panel held that the

individual plaintiffs’ amorphous and insufficiently

explained concerns about “some day” injuries were not

enough to satisfy Article III.

Finally, the panel held that the organizational

plaintiffs lacked standing. For the same reasons that

the individual plaintiffs lacked standing, the panel

rejected plaintiffs’ argument that International

Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. had associational

standing based on the alleged injury suffered by one of

its members, a Washington parent of a minor child

who has struggled with gender dysphoria. Plaintiffs

offered no assertion that the other organizational

plaintiff had any type of standing.

Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district

court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ action for lack of

standing.

COUNSEL

Gene C. Schaerr (argued) and Edward H. Trent,

Schaerr Jaffe LLP, Washington, D.C.; Jonathan F.

Mitchell, Mitchell Law PLLC, Austin, Texas; James K.

Rogers, Nicholas Barry, and Ian Prior, America First

Legal Foundation, Washington, D.C.; for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Cristina Sepe (argued) and Marsha J. Chien, Deputy

Solicitors General; Robert W. Ferguson, Attorney

General; Office of the Washington Attorney General,

Olympia, Washington; Andrew R.W. Hughes, and

Lauryn K. Fraas, Assistant Attorneys General; Office

of the Washington Attorney General, Seattle,

Washington; for Defendants-Appellees.

Eric A. Sell, Harmeet K. Dhillon, Mark Trammell, and

Josh W. Dixon, Center for American Liberty, Mount

Airy, Maryland, for Amicus Curiae the Center for

American Liberty.

Jennifer W. Kennedy, Law Office of Jennifer W.

Kennedy, Sierra Madre, California, for Amicus Curiae

Our Duty-USA.

Isaac Ruiz and McKean J. Evans, Ruiz & Smart LLP,

Seattle, Washington, for Amicus Curiae Legal Counsel

for Youth and Children.

OPINION

M. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs, two national organizations and five

sets of Washington parents, bring constitutional

challenges against three Washington laws regulating

the rights and privileges of Washington minors,

particularly minors who are transgender. The district

court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claims for lack of standing.

Plaintiffs timely appeal, contending that they have

standing based on present injuries and future injuries

that are certainly impending. We conclude, like the

district court, that Plaintiffs have not pled current or

future injuries sufficient to confer Article III standing.

Because Plaintiffs lack standing until actual or

imminent injuries occur, we affirm the district court’s

dismissal of their action.

LEGAL BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of three

Washington laws: (1) Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530,

(2) Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5599 (ESSB

5599), and (3) Substitute House Bill 1406 (SHB 1406)

(collectively, the Statutes). The effect of these laws is

summarized briefly here.

Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530

Enacted in 1985, Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530

was passed as part of a comprehensive law “ensur[ing]

that minors in need of mental health care and

treatment receive appropriate care and treatment.”

1985 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 354, § 1. It provides that

any minor aged 13 and older “may request and receive

outpatient treatment without the consent of the

adolescent’s parent.” Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530.

Outpatient treatment includes non-residential

programs offering, inter alia, mental and behavioral

health care. Id. §§ 71.34.020(46), 71.24.025.

Even if children receive outpatient treatment

without parental consent, their parents may still

access information about their care. For example,

Washington law provides that facilities offering

mental health services may release medical

information and records about a child to that child’s

parents. Id. §§ 70.02.240(3), 71.34.430. Nevertheless,

“[w]hen an adolescent voluntarily consents to his or

her own mental health treatment under . . .

[§] 71.34.530, a mental health professional shall not

proactively exercise his or her discretion . . . to release

information or records related to solely mental health

services received by the adolescent to a parent of the

adolescent, beyond any notification required under

[Washington law], unless the adolescent states a clear

desire to do so[.]” Id. § 70.02.265(1)(a).

II. ESSB 5599

Enacted in 2023, ESSB 5599 approved a set of

amendments to Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082. 2023

Wash. Legis. Serv., ch. 408, § 2 (West). That law,

which was enacted in 1995, sets forth a system of

notification requirements that apply when a licensed

youth shelter “shelters a child and knows at the time

of providing the shelter that the child is away from a

lawfully prescribed residence or home without

parental

permission.”

Wash.

Rev.

Code

§ 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). Upon admitting such a child,

the shelter “must contact the youth’s parent within 72

hours, but preferably within 24 hours.” Id. 2 However,

in the presence of “compelling reasons,” including any

“[c]ircumstances that indicate that notifying the

parent or legal guardian will subject the minor to

1 Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082 also contains separate provisions

that apply to people, unlicensed shelters, and other programs

that take in runaway children. See Wash. Rev. Code

§ 13.32A.082(1)(a). Those provisions are not at issue here.

2 This notification “must include the whereabouts of the youth, a

description of the youth’s physical and emotional condition, and

the circumstances surrounding the youth’s contact with the

shelter.” Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i).

abuse or neglect,” the shelter may forego contacting

the child’s parents and contact the Washington

Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF)

instead. Id. § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i), (2)(c)(i). Upon

contact, DCYF must “make a good faith attempt to

notify the parent that a report has been received and

offer services to the youth and the family designed to

resolve the conflict . . . and accomplish a reunification

of the family.” Id. § 13.32A.082(3)(a).

ESSB 5599 adds to this framework by creating a

notification pathway that is specific to youth “seeking

or receiving protected health care services,” including

“gender-affirming treatment” and “reproductive

health care services.” Id. § 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii), (2)(d). 3

Under the existing framework set forth in Wash. Rev.

Code § 13.32A.082, licensed shelters that took in such

children were obligated to notify their parents so long

as doing so would not “subject the minor to abuse or

neglect.” Id. § 13.32A.082(2)(c)(i). ESSB 5599 modifies

this framework by providing that the fact of a child’s

“seeking or receiving protected health care services”

creates an additional instance in which the shelter’s

obligation to notify the child’s parents is voided. Id.

§ 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii). In these situations, as when the

shelter fears potential abuse or neglect by the child’s

3 Washington

law defines “gender-affirming treatment” as “a

service or product that a health care provider . . . prescribes to an

individual to support and affirm the individual’s gender identity.”

Wash. Rev. Code § 74.09.675(3). It defines “reproductive health

care services” as “any medical services or treatments, including

pharmaceutical and preventive care service or treatments,

directly involved in the reproductive system and its processes,

functions, and organs involved in reproduction, in all stages of

life.” Id. § 74.09.875(4)(c).

parents, the shelter may again forego contacting the

child’s parents and contact DCYF instead. Id.

§ 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i), (2)(c)(ii)

As in a case involving potential abuse or neglect,

a licensed shelter’s report to DCYF will again trigger

DCYF’s good-faith obligation “to notify the parent that

a report has been received and offer services to the

youth and the family designed to resolve the conflict

. . . and accomplish a reunification of the family.” Id.

§ 13.32A.082(3)(a). ESSB 5599 further specifies that,

if a licensed shelter notifies DCYF that it has taken in

a minor seeking or receiving “protected health care

services,” DCYF must specifically offer two types of

services. First, DCYF must “[o]ffer to make referrals

on behalf of the minor for appropriate behavioral

health services.” Id. § 13.32A.082(3)(b)(i). Second,

DCYF must “[o]ffer services designed to resolve the

conflict and accomplish a reunification of the family.”

Id. § 13.32A.082(3)(b)(ii).

III. SHB 1406

Enacted during the same session as ESSB 5599,

SHB 1406 implements two additional revisions to the

framework set forth in Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082.

2023 Wash. Legis. Serv., ch. 151, § 2 (West). First, it

creates additional rules concerning DCYF’s good-faith

obligation to notify a child’s parents and offer services

after receiving a report of a runaway child. Wash. Rev.

Code § 13.32A.082(3)(a). Specifically, in addition to

“notify[ing] the parent that a report has been

received,” id., DCYF must offer “family reconciliation

services,” id., which are “services . . . designed to

assess and stabilize the family with the goal of

resolving crisis and building supports, skills, and

connection to community networks and resources,” id.

§ 13.32A.030(11). DCYF must offer these services “as

soon as possible, but no later than three days,

excluding weekends and holidays, following the

receipt of a report.” Id. § 13.32A.082(3)(a).

Second, SHB 1406 expressly recognizes a

pathway for qualifying minors to stay in a licensed

shelter for up to 90 days without parental permission.

See id. § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). This pathway is only

available in two situations: (1) if the shelter “is unable

to make contact with a parent despite their

notification efforts” to the parent or DCYF, id.

§ 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i)(A), or (2) if the shelter “makes

contact with a parent, but the parent does not request

that

the

child

return

home,”

id.

§ 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i)(B). In either scenario, the shelter

must re-contact DCYF, which again must offer

reconciliation

services

the

family.

Id.

§ 13.32A.082(3).

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs are two organizations and five sets of

parents that have challenged the Statutes as

unconstitutional. The organizations—International

Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. (IPEC) and Advocates

Protecting

Children

(APC)

(collectively,

the

Organizational Plaintiffs)—are national nonprofits

that share a commitment to “stop[ping] the unethical

treatment of children by schools, hospitals, and

mental and medical healthcare providers under the

duplicitous banner of gender identity affirmation.”

The parents—1A and 1B, 2A and 2B, 3A and 3B, 4A

10a

and 4B, and 5A and 5B (collectively, the Individual

Plaintiffs 4)—are residents or citizens of Washington

whose children have shown signs of gender

dysphoria. 5Their experiences are summarized briefly

here. 6

Parents 1A and 1B have a 14-year-old child, 1C,

who has shown signs of gender dysphoria. After 1C

underwent a social transition at school, 1A and 1B

sought treatment for 1C and removed 1C from school.

These actions caused 1C’s “gender confusion [to] ease[]

some.” Yet 1A and 1B remain “concerned” that 1C will

again seek to “adopt a gender identi[t]y inconsistent

with [1C’s] biological sex.” They “fear” that 1C may

seek to take advantage of the framework set forth in

the Statutes and worry that “[i]f 1C were to run away,

the [Statutes] would greatly harm [their] ability to

care for and raise” 1C. This concern has made 1A

“hesitant to discipline 1C for fear it will cause a rift

that others might take advantage of.”

Parents 2A and 2B have two children—an 18year-old, 2C, and a 13-year-old, 2D—who have shown

signs of gender dysphoria. 2C, who has accused 2A and

4 Due to the sensitivity of the Individual Plaintiffs’ experiences

and claims, the district court granted their motion to proceed

using pseudonyms.

5 4A

and 4B are the only Individual Plaintiffs whose children

have not shown signs of gender dysphoria. Presumably for this

reason, Plaintiffs do not pursue the claims of 4A and 4B on

appeal. We follow Plaintiffs’ lead in focusing on the claims of the

other Individual Plaintiffs.

6 This section is based on the allegations in the First Amended

Complaint (FAC). Because the procedural posture is that of a

motion to dismiss, the allegations in the FAC are accepted as

true. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2008).

11a

2B of being “transphobic,” has threatened to take 2D,

who underwent a social transition at school, to a “safe

place” where 2D’s pronouns would be respected. This

causes 2A and 2B to become fearful every time 2D

leaves their home with 2C. To avoid exacerbating

tensions with their children, 2A and 2B have begun to

avoid talking about gender around 2C and 2D, and 2A

has also ceased using 2D’s name or pronouns in public

settings. 2A and 2B worry that, “should [2D] run away

to a shelter,” their parental rights would be limited.

Parents 3A and 3B have a 14-year-old child, 3C,

who is autistic and has shown signs of gender

dysphoria. 3C has “experiment[ed] with a new name

and . . . pronouns with friends and at school,” and is

“frequently ambivalent about . . . gender.” When 3C’s

older brother experienced similar signs of gender

confusion, “a friend’s family encouraged [him] to run

away and live with them.” 3A and 3B fear that 3C may

similarly be encouraged to run away and worry that,

if 3C does, the Statutes will “force[] [them] to accept

‘gender-affirming treatment’ for” 3C.

Finally, Parents 5A and 5B have a 15-year-old

child, 5C, who has shown signs of gender dysphoria.

5C’s symptoms came on “rapid[ly]” at age 12, and 5C

later underwent a social transition at school without

5A and 5B’s knowledge. 5C continues to identify as

“transgender” at school and has “had conversations

with numerous therapists and behavioral health

specialists about gender identity and ‘transitioning.’”

Because 5C ran away from home once at age 13, and

because 5C has since had “hospitalizations” about

which 5A and 5B have limited information, 5A and 5B

12a

worry that 5C will run away again and will rely on the

Statutes to seek gender-affirming care.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs first filed suit in August 2023,

challenging ESSB 5599 on a facial basis. Their

complaint named as defendants former Washington

Governor Jay Inslee, former Washington Attorney

General Robert Ferguson, and DCYF Secretary Ross

Hunter, all in their official capacities (collectively, the

State). The State moved to dismiss for lack of

standing, and Plaintiffs responded by amending their

complaint as of right pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P.

15(a)(1)(B). Their First Amended Complaint (FAC)

added a new set of parents—Parents 5A and 5B—and

new challenges to SHB 1406 and Wash. Rev. Code

§ 71.34.530. The FAC asserts claims under the Due

Process Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and the

Free Speech Clause.

In December 2023, Defendants again moved to

dismiss for lack of standing. This time, Plaintiffs did

not seek to amend the FAC, and the district court

proceeded to evaluate the merits of the motion. It

found that Plaintiffs’ alleged harms were based on a

“speculative chain of possibilities.” The district court

thus held that the Individual Plaintiffs had not

suffered concrete injuries sufficient to confer standing.

The district court similarly concluded that the

Organizational Plaintiffs had not sufficiently alleged

organizational standing. The district court dismissed

the action with prejudice for lack of standing and

entered final judgment.

13a

JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

§ 1291. Meland v. Weber, 2 F.4th 838, 843 (9th Cir.

2021). “We review questions of standing de novo,”

Tyler v. Cuomo, 236 F.3d 1124, 1131 (9th Cir. 2000),

construing “all material allegations of fact in the

complaint in favor of the plaintiff,” Southcentral

Found. v. Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium,

983 F.3d 411, 416–17 (9th Cir. 2020).

ANALYSIS

The sole question we must resolve on appeal is

whether Plaintiffs have standing to bring their claims.

To establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must show

that he has suffered or will imminently suffer an

injury in fact, i.e., “an invasion of a legally protected

interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and

(b) ‘actual or imminent, not “conjectural” or

“hypothetical.”’” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S.

555, 560 (1992) (citations omitted) (quoting Whitmore

v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155 (1990)). A plaintiff

must

further

demonstrate

causation

and

redressability by showing “that the injury likely was

caused or will be caused by the defendant, and . . . that

the injury likely would be redressed by the requested

judicial relief.” Food & Drug Admin. v. All. for

Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 368, 380 (2024).

The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claims for

lack of standing, specifically concluding that Plaintiffs

had not demonstrated a cognizable injury in fact.

Plaintiffs contest this conclusion, arguing that they

can demonstrate three independent and legally

sufficient types of injuries. First, Plaintiffs contend

14a

that some or all of the Individual Plaintiffs are

suffering current injuries. Second, Plaintiffs contend

that some or all of the Individual Plaintiffs are likely

to suffer future injuries that are certainly impending.

Finally, Plaintiffs contend that IPEC, one of the

Organizational Plaintiffs, has associational standing

based on the claims of its member. For the following

reasons, we conclude that Plaintiffs are unable to

muster standing under any of these theories.

The Individual Plaintiffs Lack Standing

Based on Current Injuries.

Plaintiffs first contend that some or all of the

Individual Plaintiffs have standing based on current

injuries. They point to three types of injuries:

constraints on their ability to parent, censored speech,

and restrictions on access to information about their

children. The State responds that these injuries are

not cognizable under Article III. Construing the

allegations in the FAC in favor of Plaintiffs, Pennell v.

City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1, 7 (1988), we agree with

the State that Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries are not

cognizable.

Constraints on Parenting

Plaintiffs first argue that the Statutes have

injured the Individual Plaintiffs by forcing them to

alter their parenting styles. This injury is most

pertinent to Parents 1A and 1B. Fearing that their

child, 1C, may run away to seek gender-affirming care,

1A and 1B are “hesitant to discipline 1C” because they

do not wish to give 1C any reason to leave home. This

tension further leaves 1A “uncomfortable every time

she has a disagreement with 1C.” Plaintiffs argue that

15a

these types of parenting-related difficulties are

practical injuries that the Individual Plaintiffs have

suffered due to the Statutes.

These injuries are not sufficient to confer

standing. As noted, Article III standing requires that

a plaintiff present an “actual or imminent” injury that

is fairly traceable to the defendant’s conduct. Lujan,

504 U.S. at 560 (quoting Whitmore, 495 U.S. at 155).

As a corollary, a plaintiff “cannot manufacture

standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves

based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that

is not certainly impending.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l

USA, 568 U.S. 398, 416 (2013). Stated another way,

“[n]o [plaintiff] can be heard to complain about

damage inflicted by its own hand.” Pennsylvania v.

New Jersey, 426 U.S. 660, 664 (1976) (per curiam); see

also Nat’l Family Plan. & Reprod. Health Ass’n v.

Gonzales, 468 F.3d 826, 831 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“We have

consistently held that self-inflicted harm doesn’t

satisfy the basic requirements for standing. Such

harm does not amount to an ‘injury’ cognizable under

Article III.”); Iten v. Los Angeles, 81 F.4th 979, 990 n.1

(9th Cir. 2023).

Damages “inflicted by [their] own hand” are

precisely what Plaintiffs offer here. Pennsylvania, 426

U.S. at 664. Critically, Plaintiffs do not allege that

their or their children’s behavior has yet brought them

within reach of the Statutes. Instead, they allege only

that the looming “threat” imposed by the Statutes has

led them to alter their parenting styles so that the

Statutes cannot affect them. Such injuries are selfinflicted because they are the result of “voluntary”

actions that Plaintiffs have taken “in response to” the

16a

Statutes—not because of any actual requirement that

the Statutes impose. See Twitter, Inc. v. Paxton, 56

F.4th 1170, 1176 (9th Cir. 2022) (finding that the

plaintiff lacked standing because the only injuries it

suffered were voluntarily “taken in response to” the

challenged action); see also Maryland v. Louisiana,

451 U.S. 725, 742 n.18 (1981) (affirming that standing

does not arise from an “injury [that] was voluntarily

suffered”). As a result, Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries do

not give rise to standing. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560.

Censored Speech

Plaintiffs next argue that the Statutes have

injured the Individual Plaintiffs by forcing them to

censor their speech. This injury is most pertinent to

Parents 2A and 2B. Fearing that their children may

run away if angered or confronted about their gender

dysphoria, 2A and 2B have stopped talking about

gender with or in front of their children. Similarly, 2A

no longer uses 2D’s given name or pronouns in public

settings in order to avoid upsetting 2D. In these ways,

2A and 2B have “suppress[ed] [their] own speech in an

effort to avoid the consequences of the challenged

provisions.”

Self-censorship may give rise to standing when it

is based on “an actual and well-founded fear that the

law will be enforced against [the plaintiff].” Virginia v.

Am. Booksellers Ass’n, Inc., 484 U.S. 383, 393 (1988);

see also Clapper, 568 U.S. at 417–18; Laird v. Tatum,

408 U.S. 1, 13–14 (1972). However, “such a fear of

prosecution will only inure if the plaintiff’s intended

speech arguably falls within the statute’s reach.” Cal.

Pro-Life Council, Inc. v. Getman, 328 F.3d 1088, 1095

17a

(9th Cir. 2003); Ariz. Right to Life Pol. Action Comm.

v. Bayless, 320 F.3d 1002, 1006 (9th Cir. 2003);

Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486 (1965).

Plaintiffs cannot make this showing with respect

to the Statutes because the Statutes do not regulate

speech: They set forth rules and systems pertaining to

the rights and privileges of Washington minors, and

they have no bearing on whether and to what extent

Plaintiffs are permitted to speak about topics, such as

gender, with or around their children. This distinction

separates Plaintiffs from those individuals that have

been permitted to “hold [their] tongue[s] and challenge

now.” Ariz. Right to Life, 320 F.3d at 1006. Whereas

those individuals sought to challenge regulations

under which they would suffer likely prosecution,

Plaintiffs cannot “reasonably fear[] prosecution under

[the Statutes] for engaging in protected speech”

because the Statutes do not regulate or prosecute

speech. Id. at 1007. As a result, Plaintiffs lack “an

actual and well-founded fear that [the Statutes] will

be enforced against [them],” and they have accordingly

not “suffered the constitutionally recognized injury of

self-censorship.” Cal. Pro-Life Council, 328 F.3d at

1095 (quoting Virginia, 484 U.S. at 393); see Clapper,

568 U.S. at 417–18.

Limited Access to Information

Plaintiffs finally argue that the Statutes have

injured the Individual Plaintiffs by limiting their

access to relevant information about their children.

Plaintiffs focus on two specific harms that are alleged

in the FAC.

18a

The first alleged harm concerns efforts by the

schools of Plaintiffs’ children to facilitate social

transitions or provide gender-related counseling

without notice to parents. For example, 1C’s school

helped 1C to “socially ‘transition’” 1C without

providing prior notice to 1A and 1B. 5C’s school,

similarly, did not consult 5A and 5B before providing

5C with a “school counselor” to discuss transitioning.

Plaintiffs argue that these schools’ refusal to seek

consent or provide up-to-date information relating to

their children’s gender has “undermine[d] [their]

ability to raise their children,” thereby imposing

injury. But as alleged in the FAC, these incidents bear

no relation to the Statutes, which do not regulate the

conduct of public schools. As a result, these incidents

are neither “fairly traceable to [the State’s] allegedly

unlawful conduct [nor] likely to be redressed by

[Plaintiffs’] requested relief”—a declaration that the

Statutes are unconstitutional and an injunction

preventing their enforcement. Allen v. Wright, 468

U.S. 737, 751 (1984). These gaps are fatal to standing.

See id.

Plaintiffs also point to the fact, as alleged in the

FAC, that 5C has had “hospitalizations, but has

refused to talk to 5A and 5B about the details.”

Plaintiffs assert that 5C was permitted to “ke[ep] [5A

and 5B] in the dark” due to Wash. Rev. Code

§ 71.34.530, the law that authorizes minors to receive

outpatient mental health treatment without parental

approval. But Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530 does not

regulate parental access to medical records, and other

provisions that do, such as Wash. Rev. Code

§ 70.02.240, are not challenged in the FAC. Further,

19a

the FAC lacks allegations connecting 5A and 5B’s

alleged injury to this statutory framework. Notably, it

does not allege that 5C’s hospitalizations were for

outpatient mental or behavioral health treatment,

that 5A and 5B declined to authorize that treatment,

or that 5A and 5B sought information from 5C’s

medical providers. See Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530.

Without those allegations, the FAC fails to tie 5A and

5C’s alleged injury to any of the challenged provisions

of Washington law.

II. The Individual Plaintiffs Lack Standing

Based on Future Injuries.

Plaintiffs further contend that even if the

Individual Plaintiffs have not suffered cognizable

current injuries, they still have standing to sue based

on their likelihood of being injured in the future. This

argument turns on the factual circumstances

presented by the Individual Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs

suggest that, because they have minor children who

experience gender dysphoria and socially transitioned

at school, “one may infer that at least one child is likely

to run away in the future” and therefore come within

reach of the Statutes.

Plaintiffs’ argument distills to the suggestion

that, because Plaintiffs may someday be affected by

the Statutes, Plaintiffs should have standing to

challenge the Statutes now. A similar argument was

put forward in Lujan. There, environmental

organizations sought to challenge a regulation that

limited the geographic scope of the Endangered

Species Act’s consultation requirements. Lujan, 504

U.S. at 557–58. The organizations conceded that they

20a

were not directly subject to the regulation, but they

insisted that it would harm their members through a

tenuous casual pathway: Because “the lack of

consultation . . . [would] ‘increas[e] the rate of

extinction of endangered and threatened species,’”

members of the organizations who “inten[ded]” to

travel the world and appreciate animal diversity

would someday be “deprived of the opportunity to

observe animals of the endangered species” that the

regulation adversely affected. Id. at 562–64.

The Supreme Court rejected this attempt to

contrive a future injury. It explained that, in the

absence of a present injury, plaintiffs may satisfy

standing by showing that they face a future injury that

is “imminent,” or “certainly impending.” Id. at 561, 564

n.2 (quoting Whitmore, 495 U.S. at 158). But it found

that the “imminence” requirement “ha[d] been

stretched beyond the breaking point” in the case of the

organizational plaintiffs because they “allege[d] only

an injury at some indefinite future time, and the acts

necessary to make the injury happen [we]re at least

partly within the [organizations’] own control.” Id. at

564 n.2. The Court noted, for example, that standing

would require the organizations to show “not only that

listed species were in fact being threatened by funded

activities abroad, but also that one or more of [the]

members would thereby be ‘directly’ affected[.]” Id. at

563 (quoting Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 735

(1972)). In the absence of that showing, the Court held

that the organizations’ “‘some day’ intentions—

without any description of concrete plans, or indeed

even any specification of when the some day w[ould]

be—d[id] not support a finding of the ‘actual or

21a

imminent’ injury that [Article III] require[s].” Id. at

564.

Plaintiffs’ situation is analogous. They contend

that, “[g]iven that there are at least four genderdysphoric minors represented by the parent

Plaintiffs,” “there is a credible likelihood that at least

one of the parent Plaintiffs’ children will run away to

a shelter and thus trigger the [Statutes].” But as the

district court found, Plaintiffs’ claims rely on an

enormity of “ifs” and “shoulds,” without any detail or

explanation as to when or why these contingencies

might occur. For example, 3A and 3B worry that “[i]f

3C were to run away and receive counseling to affirm

a ‘transgender identity,’ or receive medical ‘treatment’

to . . . look more like” the opposite sex, they would fall

within the reach of the Statutes and be adversely

impacted. But Plaintiffs present no allegation that 3C

is transgender, has sought gender-affirming

treatment, or has expressed an interest in running

away. In the absence of those details, like the plaintiff

organizations in Lujan, Plaintiffs’ amorphous and

insufficiently explained concerns about “some day”

injuries are “simply not enough” to satisfy Article III.

See id.

Plaintiffs’ attempt to demonstrate future injury is

made more difficult by the complicated and specific

pathway that is necessary to trigger the Statutes. In

Lujan, for example, the Court found that the

organizational plaintiffs would come into contact with

the challenged regulations if two events occurred:

(1) the regulations threatened endangered species,

and (2) that threat directly affected organizational

members. Id. at 563. Here, by contrast, Plaintiffs will

22a

come into contact with the Statutes only if a more

convoluted series of events transpires: (1) one of the

Individual Plaintiffs’ minor children (2) runs away

(3) to a licensed shelter (4) while actively seeking or

receiving gender-affirming care, resulting in (5) the

shelter taking in the child (6) despite knowing that the

minor is there without parental permission. See Wash.

Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). Plaintiffs do not allege

that these events have transpired, and they fail to

provide “concrete” details or “specification of when”

they might occur. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 564. 7 Thus,

considered in light of the complex statutory scheme

they challenge, Plaintiffs’ basic “[a]llegations of

possible future injury” are especially insufficient.

Clapper, 568 U.S. at 409 (alteration in original)

(quoting Whitmore, 495 U.S. at 158).

Plaintiffs attempt to counter this result with

three different arguments, but none is persuasive.

They first argue that, even if their prospect of future

injury remains uncertain, the Statutes have already

harmed them by increasing the likelihood that they

will suffer some injury in the future. Relying on the

7 The closest Plaintiffs come is their allegation that 5A and 5B’s

child, 5C, once “ran away from home” at age 13. But Plaintiffs

make no claim that 5C ran away to a licensed shelter, did so

without parental permission, or is seeking or receiving genderaffirming care. See Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). In any

event, the allegation that 5C ran away once is not sufficient to

suggest that 5C will do so again in the future. See City of Los

Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 105 (1983) (“That Lyons may have

been illegally choked by the police . . . does nothing to establish a

real and immediate threat that he would again be stopped . . . by

an officer or officers who would illegally choke him into

unconsciousness[.]”).

23a

concept of a “probabilistic harm”—the idea that

“[e]ven a small probability of injury is sufficient to

create a case or controversy”—Plaintiffs assert that

they have demonstrated a sufficient probability of

harm to satisfy standing here. Massachusetts v. EPA,

549 U.S. 497, 525 n.23 (2007) (quoting Village of Elk

Grove Village v. Evans, 997 F.3d 328, 329 (7th Cir.

1993)).

We agree that, in light of the “probabilistic”

nature of the injury-in-fact requirement, Cent. Delta

Water Agency v. United States, 306 F.3d 938, 948 (9th

Cir. 2002) (quoting Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Gaston

Copper Recycling Corp., 204 F.3d 149, 160 (4th Cir.

2000) (en banc)), “increased . . . risk of future harm”

may be sufficient to confer standing, Krottner v.

Starbucks Corp., 628 F.3d 1139, 1143 (9th Cir. 2010).

See Covington v. Jefferson Cnty., 358 F.3d 626, 638

n.15 (9th Cir. 2004). But Plaintiffs misstate the

implications of this principle. Although probabilistic

harm can create standing, it does not replace the

foundational rule that a future injury must be

imminent in order to satisfy the injury-in-fact

requirement. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 564 n.2. The notion of

probabilistic harm merely recognizes that a plaintiff

may reach that bar by showing that his likelihood of

harm has significantly increased, bringing his

potential for injury from certainly imaginable to

“certainly impending.” Clapper, 568 U.S. at 414; see,

e.g., Krottner, 628 F.3d at 1143 (plaintiffs’ “increased

[] risk of future harm” created a “credible threat of real

and immediate harm” that was sufficient to create

standing); Covington, 358 F.3d at 641 (same); Nat.

Res. Def. Council v. U.S. EPA, 735 F.3d 873, 878–79

24a

(9th Cir. 2013) (same); Harris v. Bd. of Supervisors,

366 F.3d 754, 762 (9th Cir. 2004) (same). For the

aforementioned reasons, Plaintiffs have not made that

showing here.

Plaintiffs also argue that they need not

demonstrate a high likelihood of impending injury

because the potential injuries they face are “drastic.”

In support of this argument, Plaintiffs quote

Massachusetts for the proposition that “[t]he more

drastic the injury that government action makes more

likely, the lesser the increment in probability to

establish standing.” 549 U.S. at 525 n.23 (quoting

Mountain States Legal Found. v. Glickman, 92 F.3d

1228, 1234 (D.C. Cir. 1996)). Yet Plaintiffs miscast the

context of this comment, which arose in a discussion

about the redressability requirement, not the injuryin-fact requirement. Specifically, in Massachusetts,

the defendant agency had argued that the plaintiff

states could not demonstrate redressability because

the regulation they challenged “contribute[d] so

insignificantly to [their] injuries that the Agency

[could] not be haled into federal court to answer for

them.” Id. at 523. The Supreme Court relied on the

severity of the states’ injuries only in rejecting this

specific argument. Id. It reasoned that, although

vacating the regulation might not fully redress the

states’ injuries, the “potential consequences” it

presented were so drastic that it was worth litigating

the issue. Id. at 525 & n.3. That principle has no

bearing on the question here—whether Plaintiffs have

demonstrated an adequate injury in fact based on

future injuries.

25a

Plaintiffs finally attempt an analogy to preenforcement standing injuries, but this argument is

also unavailing. Article III standing in the preenforcement context arises when an individual is

subject to a credible threat of government action.

Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149, 158

(2014). When the threatened enforcement is

sufficiently imminent, “an actual arrest, prosecution,

or other enforcement action is not a prerequisite to

challenging the law.” Id. But Plaintiffs concede that

this concept is not directly applicable here. Moreover,

standing in pre-enforcement cases still requires

“circumstances

that

render

the

threatened

enforcement sufficiently imminent.” Id. at 159; see

also Clark v. City of Seattle, 899 F.3d 802, 813 (9th Cir.

2018). Because Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that

their injuries are imminent, their self-described

“analog[y]” to pre-enforcement cases does not help

their cause.

III. The

Organizational

Standing.

Plaintiffs

Lack

In the alternative, Plaintiffs argue that IPEC, one

of the two Organizational Plaintiff, has standing to

pursue its claims. Plaintiffs specifically contend that

IPEC has associational standing because it has one

member who is a Washington resident with custody of

a gender-dysphoric minor. Plaintiffs do not contend

that IPEC has organizational standing on its own

behalf, and they offer no assertion that APC, the other

Organizational Plaintiff, has any type of standing.

Associational standing is a form of derivative

standing that allows an organization to bring suit on

26a

behalf of its members. Hunt v. Wash. State Apple

Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 342–43 (1977). An

organization has associational standing to bring suit

(1) “when its members would otherwise have standing

to sue in their own right,” (2) “the interests at stake

are germane to the organization’s purpose,” and

(3) “neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested

requires the participation of individual members in

the lawsuit.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw

Env’t Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181 (2000); see

also Ecological Rts. Found. v. Pac. Lumber Co., 230

F.3d 1141, 1147 (9th Cir. 2000).

IPEC does not satisfy this standard. As noted,

IPEC claims standing based on the alleged injury

suffered by one of its members, who is “a Washington

parent with custody of a minor child who has struggled

with gender dysphoria.” But this individual IPEC

member lacks standing for the same reasons as the

Individual Plaintiffs: He or she has not suffered a

cognizable current injury, and the FAC fails to offer

allegations showing that a future injury is certainly

impending. Therefore, because IPEC has not

demonstrated that its individual members have

standing to sue, its claim to associational standing

fails at the first step. See Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S.

at 181; see, e.g., Wilderness Soc., Inc. v. Rey, 622 F.3d

1251, 1255–57 (9th Cir. 2010) (finding an organization

lacked associational standing where its member had

not demonstrated a sufficiently specific injury in fact).

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that

Plaintiffs have not demonstrated standing to bring

27a

their claims. Because none of the Individual Plaintiffs

has alleged a cognizable injury that is presently being

suffered, Plaintiffs lack standing on the basis of

current injuries. Further, because none of the

Individual Plaintiffs has alleged sufficient facts to

make out a clearly impending injury, Plaintiffs also

lack standing on the basis of future injuries. IPEC

lacks associational standing for the same reasons. As

a result, we agree with the district court that Plaintiffs

have failed to demonstrate standing under Article III,

and we affirm the dismissal of their action.

AFFIRMED.

28a

Appendix B

Case 3:23-cv-05736-DGE Document 50

Filed 05/15/24

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON

AT TACOMA

INTERNATIONAL

PARTNERS FOR

ETHICAL CARE, INC.,

et al.,

Plaintiffs,

JAY INSLEE, Governor

of Washington, et al.,

Defendants.

CASE NO.

23-05736 DGE-RJB

ORDER GRANTING

DEFENDANTS’

MOTION TO

DISMISS FIRST

AMENDED

COMPLAINT

This matter comes before the Court on

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ First

Amended Complaint (Dkt. 37). The Court has

considered the documents filed in support of, and in

opposition to, the motion, and the contents of the file.

The Washington State Legislature passed those

laws that are of interest here: ESSB 5599, SHB 1406

and RCW 71.34.530. Plaintiffs disagree with those

laws, as is their right. Plaintiffs’ attempt to develop

this lawsuit into a mechanism to attack those laws and

declare them void, however, fails for lack of standing.

To have standing to prosecute such claims,

Plaintiffs - Plaintiff parents, International Partners

29a

for Ethical Care, Inc. (“IPEC”), and Advocates

Protecting Children (“APC”) - must establish Article

III standing.

To establish Article III standing, Plaintiff parents

must plead an injury that is “concrete, particularized,

and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the

challenged action; and redressable by a favorable

ruling.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398,

409 (2013). Plaintiff parents do not make such a

showing. (See Dkt. 37 at 6-10 for a listing of Plaintiffs’

allegations.) The Plaintiff parents fail to allege that

the challenged laws actually injured them or will

imminently injure them in a concrete and

particularized manner. Their allegations rest on

speculation and conjecture, which is insufficient to

confer standing. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504

U.S. 555, 560 (1992).

Plaintiffs IPEC and APC must make a showing of

“associational” standing or “organizational” standing.

“An association has standing to bring suit on behalf of

its members when its members would otherwise have

standing to sue in their own right, the interests at

stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and

neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested

requires the participation of individual members in

the lawsuit.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw

Env’t Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181 (2000). An

organization has standing on its own behalf if it can

show: (1) that the defendant’s actions have frustrated

its mission; and (2) that it has spent resources

counteracting that frustration. Valle del Sol Inc. v.

Whiting, 732 F.3d 1006, 1018 (9th Cir. 2013). An

organization cannot manufacture an injury by

30a

incurring litigation costs or simply choosing to spend

money fixing a problem that otherwise would not

affect the organization at all. La Asociacion de

Trabajadores de Lake Forest v. City of Lake Forest, 624

F.3d 1083, 1088 (9th Cir. 2010). Plaintiffs IPEC and

APC have not pled facts to justify a finding of

associational or organizational standing.

In analyzing standing issues in this case, it is

interesting to note that, in the prayer of Plaintiffs’

Amended Complaint (Dkt. 34 at 64-67), Plaintiffs

couched the harm suffered as “threatened” in

paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. The Plaintiffs’

“speculative chain of possibilities” does not establish

that injury based on these potential generalized

threats is “certainly impending.” Clapper at 414. The

Plaintiffs’ “threats” alone do not show standing.

Couching Plaintiffs’ claims in terms of the United

States Constitution (Due Process, Free Exercise

Clause, Free Speech, Vagueness, etc.) does not create

standing when it is not adequately pled. References to

the Constitution do not show standing here.

Plaintiffs’ pleadings have not alleged facts

showing standing to sue, and on that basis,

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ First

Amended Complaint (Dkt. 37) should be GRANTED

under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and (6).

Further, the Plaintiffs, in response to the

Defendants’ first motion to dismiss, filed an Amended

Complaint, which was the operative complaint for

purposes of this motion. Dkt. 34 and 46. The Plaintiffs

again have failed to articulate sufficient grounds to

establish Article III standing. Accordingly, dismissal

31a

of this case should be with prejudice and without leave

to amend because further amendment would be futile.

Lipton v. Pathogenesis Corp., 284 F.3d 1027, 1039 (9th

Cir. 2002) (holding that amendment would be futile so

that there was no need to prolong the litigation by

permitting further amendment).

IT IS SO ORDERED. This case is hereby

DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.

The Clerk is directed to send uncertified copies of

this Order to all counsel of record and to any party

appearing pro se at said party’s last known address.

Dated this 15th day of May, 2024.

/s/

ROBERT J. BRYAN

United States District Judge

32a

Appendix C

Case: 24-3661, 12/05/2025, DktEntry: 64.1

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

INTERNATIONAL

PARTNERS FOR ETHICAL

CARE INC; ADVOCATES

PROTECTING CHILDREN;

PARENT 1A; PARENT 1B;

PARENT 2A; PARENT 2B;

PARENT 3A; PARENT 3B;

PARENT 4A; PARENT 4B;

PARENT 5A; PARENT 5B,

No. 24-3661

D.C. No.

3:23-cv-05736-DGE

ORDER

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

ROBERT FERGUSON,

Governor; NICK BROWN,

Attorney General of

Washington; TANA SENN,

Secretary of the Washington

Department of Children,

Youth, and Families,

Defendants - Appellees.

Filed December 5, 2025

Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Milan D. Smith, Jr.,

and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judges.

33a

Order;

Dissent by Judge VanDyke;

Dissent by Judge Tung

SUMMARY *

Article III Standing

The panel denied a petition for panel rehearing

and a petition for rehearing en banc in a case in which

the panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal, for

lack of Article III standing, of a challenge to three

Washington laws regulating the rights and privileges

of Washington minors seeking access to mental health

care and shelter services, particularly minors who are

transgender.

Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc,

Judge VanDyke, joined by Judge Bumatay, stated that

Washington’s legal regime governing the treatment of

gender dysphoria infringes on the plaintiff parents’

right to direct the care and upbringing of their

children.

Plaintiffs

plausibly

allege

unconstitutional interference with their fundamental

right to parent, and the panel’s decision to the

contrary narrows the parental right unjustly—

creating a clean split with the Fifth Circuit in the

process.

Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc,

Judge Tung, joined by Judges Bumatay and VanDyke,

stated that the facts, as alleged in the complaint,

should have been more than enough to establish

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

34a

standing. The parents alleged that Washington law

poses a substantial risk of harm to their ability to

direct the upbringing of their children and that the law

violates their constitutional rights. In concluding that

the parents’ allegations were insufficient to state an

injury-in-fact, the panel runs afoul of Supreme Court

and Ninth Circuit jurisprudence governing standing,

improperly construes the parents’ complaint in the

light most disfavorable to them, and is inconsistent

with the holdings of other circuits.

ORDER

The panel voted to deny the petition for panel

rehearing. Judge M. Smith and Judge Bress voted to

deny the petition for rehearing en banc, and Judge

S.R. Thomas so recommended.

The full court was advised of the petition for

rehearing en banc. A judge requested a vote on

whether to rehear the matter en banc. The matter

failed to receive a majority of the votes of the

nonrecused active judges in favor of en banc

consideration. Fed. R. App. P. 40. The petition for

panel rehearing and the petition for rehearing en banc

are DENIED.

VANDYKE, Circuit Judge, joined by BUMATAY,

Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of rehearing

en banc:

Time and again, the Supreme Court has reminded

lower courts that “the interest of parents in the care,

custody, and control of their children” sits among “the

oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” recognized

in our Nation. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65

35a

(2000) (plurality op.). Wherever the outer bounds of

that right may lie, the Supreme Court has not been

shy in insisting that “the state can neither supply nor

hinder” the “cardinal” role of fit parents in “the

custody, care and nurture of the child.” Prince v.

Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944). This case

teaches that apparently the state can, so long as it

keeps parents in the dark about what it’s doing.

Washington’s legal regime governing genderconfused children now empowers its state-run shelters

to hide minors from parents and to encourage them to

travel further down the path of gender ideology—all

while hiding from fit parents what the state or other

actors do in those shelters. That odious framework

inverts the age-old, common-sense principle that

parents—not the state and certainly not the child—

hold primacy over the parent–child relationship.

The panel opinion doesn’t dispute this basic point

and—one hopes—would not attempt to uphold

Washington’s legal regime if it squarely addressed it.

But its holding that parents aren’t even harmed by

this state of affairs presents a no less extreme position

and one that departs from both our sister circuit and

Supreme Court guidance. Under its rationale,

Washington doesn’t harm any parent until the

moment that it gets caught secretly subjecting a child

to so-called gender transition services—something

that parents might never know until it’s too late. Such

a reductionist view of parental rights mistakes

parental authority for a mere property interest in the

physical possession of a child—a view long rejected by

our court and others.

36a

The parents in this case have plausibly alleged

that they cannot counsel their gender-confused

children in the way they see fit, lest those children,

prompted by Washington’s novel law, leave home for a

state-run shelter that will help them undergo

transition procedures in secret. Washington’s legal

regime therefore chills the rights of these parents to

direct the care and upbringing of their children,

strikes at the heart of what the parental right protects,

and constitutes a current and ongoing invasion of the

parents’ constitutional rights.

By denying rehearing en banc, our court missed

an opportunity to correct the panel’s erroneous view

that parents only have an interest in the physical

custody of their children. Our failure to do so is

particularly troubling here where our court had a

unique and well-presented opportunity to weigh in on

a clear collision between gender ideology and parental

rights. Without rehearing, our court now joins a

growing crowd of lower courts that appear to have

made every effort to avoid addressing a constitutional

confrontation occurring all across our Nation. See Lee

v. Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1, No. 25-89, 2025 WL 2906469,

at *1 (U.S. Oct. 14, 2025) (Alito, J., concurring in the

denial of certiorari) (“But I remain concerned that

some federal courts are ‘tempt[ed]’ to avoid

confronting a ‘particularly contentious constitutional

questio[n.]’”) (alterations in original). The plaintiffs

plausibly allege an unconstitutional interference with

their fundamental right to parent, and our court

should have reheard this case and recognized that

they have alleged sufficient injury to confer standing.

I respectfully dissent from our failure to do so.

37a

This case arises from Washington’s regulatory

regime, which—through a series of amendments and

patchwork

interacting

statutes—now

systematically facilitates the covert transitioning of

children without parental knowledge or consent. In

1985, Washington enacted a series of laws to “ensure

that minors in need of mental health care and

treatment receive appropriate care and treatment.”

1985 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 354, § 1. Those laws

ensured that minors 13 years and older could receive

outpatient health treatment without the consent of

their parents. Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530.

But Washington, for decades, did not allow that

treatment to happen in secret. Instead, whenever a

shelter learned that a “child [wa]s away from a

lawfully prescribed residence or home without

parental permission,” that shelter was required by law

to contact the child’s parents within 72 hours. Wash.

Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). The only exception to

this general rule was “[i]f there [were] compelling

reasons not to notify the parent” of the child’s presence

at the shelter. Id. And those “compelling reasons”

were, predictably, only those circumstances where

“notifying the parent or legal guardian [would] subject

the minor to abuse or neglect.” Id. § 13.32A.082(2)(c).

That changed in 2023 when Washington amended its

parental notification statute. 2023 Wash. Legis. Serv.,

ch. 408, § 2. While the parental notification statute

still generally requires parental notification “within

72 hours” of the minor leaving home for health

treatment, the “compelling reasons” exception was

expanded to include any scenario where “a minor is

38a

seeking or receiving protected health care services,”

which

includes

so-called

“gender-affirming

treatment.” Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii).

That amendment now treats the parents of children

suffering from gender dysphoria as per se neglectful or

abusive and does not require the shelter to contact

them. 1

What’s worse, even if the shelter does contact a

minor’s parents to inform them that a child has run

away from home, Washington law still requires it “to

make referrals on behalf of the minor for appropriate

behavioral health services”—meaning services

intended to transition that child to a different gender.

Id. § 13.32A.082(3).

A group of plaintiffs—Washington parents with

children suffering from gender dysphoria—and two

aligned organizational plaintiffs sued to enjoin this

regulatory regime. Relevant here, two sets of

parents—1A and 1B, alongside 2A and 2B—alleged

that Washington’s legal regime has interfered with

their ability to parent their children as they see fit.

Both sets of parents have children who have expressed

confusion about their gender, including a desire to

transition to a different gender. Both sets of parents

also believe that it is in the best interest of their

children to raise them in conformity with their

biological sex. But unlike most parents, these parents

have to navigate this disagreement with the full

1 The Complaint and Petition for Rehearing En Banc both refer

to these children as experiencing “gender confusion” or “gender

dysphoria.” Consistent with the plaintiffs’ pleadings and the

motion-to-dismiss stage of this case, this dissent adopts that

terminology.

39a

knowledge that, at any moment, their children can

veto their decisions about gender and leave home for a

state-run shelter to begin transitioning in secret. That

possibility understandably has changed the behavior

of these parents who, as a result, have declined to

discuss issues of gender with their children, inculcate

their views about gender identity, or address their

children’s gender dysphoria consistent with the

parents’ beliefs. These parents alleged that their First

and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated

by Washington and sued to enjoin the relevant

statutes.

But the district court dismissed the plaintiffs’

claims as too speculative, holding that the parents

failed to allege that Washington’s legal regime had

actually harmed them. Instead, the district court

concluded that the allegations rested on “speculation

and conjecture” and dismissed the case for lack of

standing. A panel of our court agreed, holding that the

parents complained of “[d]amages ‘inflicted by [their]

own hand.’” Such a decision enervates the wellestablished right of parents to direct the care and

upbringing of their children, and perversely

encourages states to be clandestine when intentionally

interfering with such rights.

II.

It is well established that parents have the right

and duty to direct the care and upbringing of their

minor children. This right extends beyond just a mere

liberty interest in the custody of their children but also

protects

the

parent–child

relationship

from

infringement by state actors.

40a

Washington’s legal regime intentionally infringes

on that relationship by granting minor children a veto

over their parents’ decisions on gender and gender

identity. Parents cannot be free—and as alleged by

plaintiffs, are not free—to inculcate their children

with traditional views of gender so long as Washington

creates a system facilitating the transition of those

children without their parents’ involvement and

against their parents’ wishes.

Our court erred in concluding otherwise. In doing

so, our cursory holding splits with the Fifth Circuit’s

far more rigorous analysis on the scope of parental

rights. The panel’s decision goes too far in cabining

parental rights, and the full court should have

corrected that error. Washington’s legal regime not

only infringes on parental rights but, as the Fifth

Circuit explained, effectively debilitates them.

This case presented an ideal opportunity to

confront the ongoing and intensifying conflict between

longstanding conceptions of parental rights and the

ever-growing encroachment of state actors with a

particular view of gender ideology. And because it is

relatively free of the complicating factual issues that

often accompany school gender ideology cases, this

case would have allowed for both an authoritative

ruling on a contentious constitutional issue and muchneeded guidance to lower courts.

The Supreme Court has long held “that the

custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in

the parents, whose primary function and freedom

include preparation for obligations the state can

41a

neither supply nor hinder.” Prince, 321 U.S. at 166.

This parental right to direct the care and upbringing

of children preexists our own constitutional order and

flows from the “natural bonds of affection” that “lead

parents to act in the best interests of their children.”

Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 602 (1979); see also

1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of

England *447 (1753) (“Providence has … implant[ed]

in the breast of every parent that natural … affection,

which not even the deformity of person or mind … can

totally suppress.”).

It is also well settled that the parental right over

children includes “a ‘high duty’ to recognize symptoms

of illness and to seek and follow medical advice.”

Parham, 442 U.S. at 602. It would be plainly illegal for

Washington to subject a minor child to medical

procedures without parental consent under our

precedent. See Mann v. County of San Diego, 907 F.3d

1154, 1160–61 (9th Cir. 2018) (holding that the state

may not perform medical examinations on children

without parental notification and consent or judicial

authorization). But because Washington has not yet

used its state-run shelters to start transitioning a

plaintiff’s child—or at least we don’t know that it

has—the panel held that no parent could allege a

harm sufficient to confer standing.

That decision misunderstands the nature and

contours of parental rights. Centuries of American and

English tradition recognize that fit parents hold a

near-absolute right to make decisions about the care

and upbringing of their children, free from state

interference. See Troxel, 530 U.S. at 65 (plurality

opinion) (“[T]he interest of parents in the care,

42a

custody, and control of their children—is perhaps the

oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized

by this Court.”). Parental rights encompass more than

a bar against the state removing a child from the

home. See Hardwick v. Cnty. of Orange, 980 F.3d 733,

741 (9th Cir. 2020) (noting the parental right

encompasses both the right to companionship of

children and the right in raising those children).

Rather “the relationship between parent and child is

constitutionally protected,” which “the state can …

no[t] hinder.” Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U.S. 246, 255

(1978) (emphasis added). This relationship extends

beyond mere custody of a child, but also encompasses

choices broadly implicated in a parental duty to direct

the upbringing and preparation of the child for life’s

future obligations. See Troxel, 530 U.S. at 65–66

(collecting cases); see also Smith v. City of Fontana,

818 F.2d 1411, 1418 (9th Cir. 1987) (holding that the

“constitutional interest in familial companionship and

society logically extends to protect children from

unwarranted

state

interference

with

their

relationships with their parents”), overruled on other

grounds by Hodgers-Durgin v. de la Vina, 199 F.3d

1037 (1999); Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110, 142

(1989) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“Where the interest

under consideration is a parent-child relationship, we

need not ask, over and over again, whether that

interest is one that society traditionally protects.”).

Washington’s new statutory scheme strikes at the

heart of this parental right and, as alleged by

plaintiffs, chills the fundamental right of Washington

parents to direct the care and upbringing of their

43a

children. Parents 1A and 1B, for example, are parents

to a gender-confused daughter, who began expressing

gender dysphoria at a Washington public school. The

public school encouraged the daughter to “socially

transition” and present as a boy without notifying the

parents. Although the parents removed their daughter

from the school after discovering what happened,

Washington’s

statutory

framework

governing

runaway children still instills reasonable fear in 1A

and 1B. And that fear—that their daughter could run

away for a state-run gender transition facility—has

understandably chilled their approach to parenting.

As alleged by 1A and 1B, the parents have hesitated

to discipline their daughter from a reasonable concern

that doing so would incentivize her to run away and

transition without parental consent.

Parents 2A and 2B also altered their parenting in

reaction to Washington’s regulatory scheme. Those

parents have two gender confused daughters, one

eighteen years old and one who is thirteen. Both

daughters have accused the parents of being

“transphobic” for refusing to affirm the daughters’

transgender beliefs, and the older sister has explicitly

threatened to take her younger sister to a “safe place”

where her transgender identity will be affirmed. In the

face of this threat, and with the knowledge that

Washington law facilitates carrying out the threat, the

parents now decline to refer to their daughter by her

given name, don’t use any pronouns when describing

her, and refuse to inculcate the parents’ values and

beliefs about gender at all when around her.

It is difficult to see how these parents, who allege

that they cannot raise their children as they see fit

44a

because of Washington’s regulatory scheme, have not

been harmed in a manner sufficient to confer standing.

See Food & Drug Admin. v. All. for Hippocratic Med.,

602 U.S. 367, 381 (2024) (“An injury in fact can be a

physical injury, a monetary injury, … or an injury to

one’s constitutional rights, to take just a few common

examples.”). The very existence of a state regulatory

regime that encourages and facilitates the transition

of children without the consent of their parents

presently interferes with the protected parent–child

relationship by subverting a parent’s authority to

direct the upbringing of her child. The plaintiffs have

alleged exactly that and have been injured by

Washington’s statutes.

The panel nonetheless concluded that these

constraints on parenting do not arise to the level of

concrete and particularized harm. In doing so, it

fundamentally misunderstood the nature of parental

rights by concluding that the plaintiff parents have

only alleged “self-inflicted injuries” in describing how

Washington’s legal regime has chilled and interfered

with their parenting. In the panel’s view, the parents

cannot show standing until the moment that “their

children’s behavior has … brought them within the

reach of the Statutes.” “[W]ithin the reach of the

Statutes” presumably means that Washington must

first hide a gender-confused child from their parents

before a parent may sue.

But the real harm to parents from Washington’s

legal regime happens long before a child runs away.

Such an intentional interference with the parent–child

45a

relationship, be it direct or indirect, creates an injury

to the fundamental right to parent. See, e.g., Troxel,

530 U.S. at 75 (“[T]he burden of litigating a domestic

relations proceeding can itself be so disruptive of the

parent-child relationship that the constitutional right

of a custodial parent to make certain basic

determinations for the child’s welfare becomes

implicated.”) (internal quotations omitted); see also

City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom, 2025 WL

1720210, at *6 (C.D. Cal. June 16, 2025) (finding

injury where “parents and children are at odds with

each other regarding how to address … gender identity

issues, resulting in difficulties parenting the children

in the manner the parents want to raise them”); City

of Fontana, 818 F.2d at 1418 (identifying “the many

times the Supreme Court has interpreted the due

process clause to protect the interests of parents in

maintaining a relationship with their children”

(simplified) and describing Kelson v. City of

Springfield, 767 F.2d 651 (9th Cir. 1985), overruled on

other grounds by Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327

(1986), as holding that “a parent has a constitutionally

protected liberty interest in the companionship and

society of his or her child”).

The Fifth Circuit carefully explained this point

just a few years ago in Deanda v. Becerra, 96 F. 4th

750 (5th Cir. 2024). There a parent (Deanda) sued the

Secretary of Health and Human Services over the

implementation of Title X, which funded programs

that offered contraceptives to minors without parental

consent. Id. at 754–55. Deanda sought to raise his

children under a traditional Christian worldview,

which includes a belief in abstaining from pre-martial

46a

sexual relations. Id. at 754. He argued that the

Secretary’s funding of any program that offered

contraceptives to children without parental consent

violated “his constitutional right to direct his

children’s upbringing.” Id. at 755.

Deanda never alleged that any child of his had

actually received contraceptives under these programs

or even, as the plaintiffs here allege in detail, that his

children were at a heightened risk of availing

themselves of that program. Id. at 758. And the

Secretary made the same argument against standing

that the panel adopted in this case: that since Deanda

never alleged that his children took advantage of the

contraception program, it did not injure him. Id.

The Fifth Circuit properly rejected that view as “a

puzzling argument,” holding that Deanda’s “parental

right[] to notice and consent” was invaded by the mere

existence of the state-run program that provided

contraceptives to minors without informing parents or

obtaining their consent. Id. at 759. As the court

explained, the program acted to “nullify[] [Deanda’s]

parental rights” by creating a workaround to parental

consent. Id. at 760. That conferred standing for

Deanda “because the Secretary [sought] to preempt

his … right to consent to his children’s obtaining

contraceptives.” Id. 2

2 The Fifth Circuit considered Deanda’s right in the context of

“his state-conferred right” to direct the care and upbringing of his

children. Deanda, 96 F.4th at 760. But I don’t read Deanda’s

analysis as dependent on that state right since, unless that state

right mapped onto the federal parental right, the Fifth Circuit

could not have held that it preempted Title X’s regulations. See

id. at 768 (enjoining the implementation of Title X); see also

47a

Deanda’s reasoning maps neatly onto this case.

There’s no reasonable dispute that Washington’s legal

regime intentionally allows for and encourages minors

to seek and obtain gender transition services over the

objections of fit parents. There’s also no reasonable

dispute that fit parents have a constitutional right to

make major health decisions on behalf of their minor

children. So just like Title X’s contraceptive

distribution program, Washington’s legal regime does

“not merely ‘inva[de]’ [plaintiffs’] parental rights ….

[i]t w[ill] obliterate them.” Deanda, 96 F.4th at 757

(first alteration in original) (quoting Warth v. Seldin,

422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975)).

I wonder if my colleagues would fault these

parents for complaining of “[d]amages ‘inflicted by

[their] own hand’” if this case involved injuries that

were not yet so strongly championed by political actors

in Washington. For now, Washington law defines

“protected healthcare services” as so-called “genderaffirming treatment,” which excuses these shelters

from notifying parents that their children are

receiving these procedures. 2023 Wash. Legis. Serv.,

ch. 408, § 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii). But what if Washington

expanded that definition to include “Medical

Assistance in Dying” among the “protected healthcare

services”? When exactly would the panel concede that

the parental right was implicated by a state-run,

assisted-suicide-in-secret program? Would parents of

a suicidal teenager who threatened to run away have

standing to sue? What if these parents lived in fear

United States v. Missouri, 114 F.4th 980, 986 (8th Cir. 2024), cert.

denied, No. 24-796, 2025 WL 2823708 (U.S. Oct. 6, 2025) (“[A]

State cannot invalidate federal law to itself.”).

48a

that their child would commit suicide at this state-run

shelter without their involvement and accordingly

altered their parenting style to discourage that from

happening? 3 Following its logic in this case, the panel

would hold that the parents haven’t actually been

injured until “their children’s behavior has … brought

them within the reach of the Statutes,” and that any

pain involved in avoiding that outcome is merely selfinflicted. Is our court’s position really that, in such a

hypothetical, a parent must first have a dead child

before it could sue? If not, then why must these parents

first have a secretly transitioning child before suing?

And what a perverse incentive we have now created in

parental rights cases: only those parents willing to

first subject their child to irreparable injury can ever

have their day in court.

Our court’s holding is as unworkable as it is

illogical. So long as Washington encourages minors to

take the plunge into gender transitions without the

knowledge (or even over the objection) of fit parents,

parents lose their ability to direct the care and

upbringing of their children, regardless of whether

§ 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii)’s sword of Damocles ever falls on

that particular parent. The Fifth Circuit got this right

and our own court has tragically erred.

3 It’s not difficult to come up with examples of how this might

work. Parents could decide that their child could never leave the

house unsupervised, preventing him from attending school sports

events, spending time with friends, or even attending prom—all

healthy parts of a child’s development that parents might

reasonably forbid due to the heightened risks that would

accompany such a hypothetical legal regime.

49a

Unfortunately, today’s confrontation isn’t unique.

Differing “approaches to parental rights are

increasingly clashing in courtrooms as parents

challenge attempts by state actors to substitute the

state’s judgment for that of parents with respect to

children struggling with gender identity.” Ryan

Bangert, Parental Rights in the Age of Gender

Ideology, 27 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 715, 724 (2023). With

6,000 public schools estimated to have procedures in

place facilitating the secret transition of children

against their parents’ wishes, courts cannot continue

to dodge this growing conflict between gender identity

and parental rights indefinitely. See Poudre Sch. Dist.

R-1, 2025 WL 2906469, at *1 (Alito, J., concurring in

the denial of certiorari). Our court will need to weigh

in on this “question of great and growing national

importance” soon, and this case presented an ideal

opportunity to do so. Parents Protecting Our Child.,

UA v. Eau Claire Area Sch. Dist., Wisconsin, 145 S. Ct.

14 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting in the denial of

certiorari).

Although public education is probably the

environment where gender ideology most often runs

up against parental rights, that setting presents

unique and fact-specific considerations that have

made appellate review challenging to obtain. For

example, how a school implements its guidance on

gender ideology appears to matter a great deal to our

sister circuits. See Parents Protecting Our Child., UA

v. Eau Claire Area Sch. Dist., Wisconsin, 95 F.4th 501,

505–06 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 14 (2024)

(“All we have before us is a policy on paper without

50a

concrete facts about its implementation.”); Lee v.

Poudre Sch. Dist. R-1, 135 F.4th 924, 935 (10th Cir.

2025), cert. denied, No. 25-89, 2025 WL 2906469 (U.S.

Oct. 14, 2025) (“The parents don’t explain how policies

that presume the district knows better than parents,

or that discourage disclosure, directly caused district

staff to [harm the plaintiffs].”). That fact-specific

inquiry often limits opportunities to squarely address

a government’s infringement on parental rights

surrounding gender ideology, since a plaintiff will

remain unable to contest the factual findings about

how a school policy is effectuated even if the court

resolves constitutional questions about what rights

parents have vis-à-vis gender ideology. See Poudre

Sch. Dist. R-1, 2025 WL 2906469, at *1 (Alito, J.,

concurring in the denial of certiorari) (noting the

plaintiff’s failure to challenge the appellate court’s

dispositive holding that they had not plausibly alleged

municipal liability).

This case presents no such issues. The plaintiffs

plausibly allege that their right to parent has been

abridged by Washington’s fixed statutory regime

governing the treatment of runaway children

experiencing gender dysphoria—allegations this court

must accept as true at this stage of the proceedings.

Their argument does not depend on the factual

nuances of how a school implements its own informal

guidance documents, which are subject to change at a

moment’s notice. Rather, the plaintiffs here sue to

enjoin the operation of several statewide laws that

Washington shelters are now obligated to follow. This

court was well equipped to interpret those statutes,

alongside state shelters’ legal obligations under them,

51a

and to determine their interference with established

parental rights. We should have taken the opportunity

to do just that.

Washington’s legal regime governing the

treatment of gender dysphoria infringes on the

plaintiff parents’ right to direct the care and

upbringing of their children. Plaintiffs plausibly

alleged that they are chilled in carrying out this

constitutionally protected duty, and the panel’s

decision to the contrary narrows the parental right

unjustly—creating a clean split with the Fifth Circuit

in the process. Because the panel erred in construing

injury to parental rights too narrowly, the full court

should have reheard this case to properly define and

apply that right in this context.

I respectfully dissent.

TUNG, Circuit Judge, joined by BUMATAY and

VANDYKE, Circuit Judges, dissenting from the denial

of rehearing en banc:

This case is about whether parents with children

who suffer from gender dysphoria and are at risk of

running away have standing to challenge a

Washington State law that would prohibit shelters

from notifying parents of the location of their runaway

child. The panel held that such parents lack standing.

Respectfully, I disagree. In concluding that the

parents’ allegations were insufficient to state an

injury-in-fact, the panel runs afoul of Supreme Court

and Ninth Circuit jurisprudence governing standing,

improperly construes the parents’ complaint in the

52a

light most disfavorable to them, and is inconsistent

with the holdings of other circuits. En banc review

should have been granted to fix these errors.

Under Washington law, when a licensed shelter

takes in a runaway child, it usually must notify the

parents immediately. See Wash. Rev. Code

§ 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) (2024). A longstanding exception

provides that a shelter is barred from notifying the

parents if circumstances indicate abuse or neglect; in

that case, the shelter must instead make a report to

the State’s Department of Children, Youth, and

Families (the

“Department”).

See

id.

and

§ 13.32A.082(2)(c)(i) (2024).

But recently, the legislature added another

exception: a shelter is prohibited from notifying the

parents when the runaway child “is seeking or

receiving . . . gender-affirming treatment.” Wash. Rev.

Code §§ 13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii) and 13.32A.082(2)(d)

(2024); see also 1 ER 11 (Mot. to Dismiss) (“the shelter

must contact [the Department] instead of contacting

the youth’s parents directly”). In the legislature’s view,

a child suffering from gender dysphoria must be

“protected” from parents who do not seek “genderaffirming treatment” for their child and do not “affirm”

the child’s gender identity. State law thus places such

parents, who wish to raise their child in accordance

with the child’s biological sex, in the same category as

parents who are abusive or neglectful. Both categories

of parents lose any entitlement to be notified of their

runaway child’s location.

53a

State law restricts parental control in another

way. Upon receipt of the shelter’s report of the

runaway child, the Department “shall” offer to make

“referrals on behalf” of the child “for appropriate

behavioral health services,” see Wash. Rev. Code

§ 13.32A.082(3)(b)(i) (2024), which can include

“gender-affirming” treatment. And all this, too, can

occur without the parents’ knowledge or consent.

Indeed, the law appears designed to do just that—to

prevent parents from reuniting with their child

(unless they “affirm” the child’s gender identification)

and to clear the path of obstacles for the child to

receive “gender-affirming” treatment.

II.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, several concerned

parents challenged this law. The individual plaintiffs

here—including four sets of parents—have children

who suffer from gender dysphoria. 1 ER 16, 18–19, 22.

They do not believe it is healthy or consistent with

their deeply held convictions to “affirm” their child’s

gender identity contrary to the child’s biological sex.

1 ER 16, 19, 23. They also fear that “gender-affirming”

treatment could result in permanent bodily and

psychological damage to their child. 1 ER 23.

Such views have caused divisions within the

families here. The parents’ children, defying their

parents’ beliefs, have threatened to run away—indeed,

one child has already done so (about a year before the

filing of the complaint) and another child has

threatened to take a younger sibling to a “safe place”

away from their parents. 1 ER 18, 22, 45. Having

“socially transitioned,” the

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