Amicus Curiae Brief — International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Bob Ferguson, Governor of Washington, et al.

Supreme Court briefSep 15, 2026

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No. 25-840

In the Supreme Court of the United States

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS FOR ETHICAL

CARE INC., ET AL.,

Petitioners,

BOB FERGUSON, GOVERNOR OF WASHINGTON, ET AL.,

Respondents.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

BRIEF OF ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER

AS AMICUS CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONERS

ERIC N. KNIFFIN

Counsel of Record

MARY RICE HASSON

RACHEL N. MORRISON

ETHICS AND PUBLIC

POLICY CENTER

1730 M Street N.W.

Suite 910

Washington, DC 20036

(202) 682-1200

ekniffin@eppc.org

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE............................ 1

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF

ARGUMENT ........................................................ 2

ARGUMENT ............................................................... 4

The panel erred by failing to consider what

parents’ “legally protected interest”

entails. .................................................................. 4

II. At common law, parental rights correlate

with parents’ broad common law duties—

and include a presumption of fitness only

an individualized finding can overcome. ............. 5

A. This Court looks to the common law to

define constitutional rights; at common

law, rights are correlative of duties. .............. 6

B. Parental rights include a presumption

that parents are fit, rebuttable only by

an individualized finding. .............................. 9

III. Parents have standing because

Washington laws invade their legally

protected interests. ............................................ 12

A. Washington laws invade parents’ right

to carry out their common law duties

free from state coercion. ............................... 12

B. Washington laws strip parents of the

presumption of fitness without an

individualized finding. .................................. 15

CONCLUSION ......................................................... 19

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Cocke v. Hannum,

39 Miss. 423 (Miss. Err. & App. 1860) .................. 10

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org.,

597 U.S. 215 (2022). ................................................. 6

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,

504 U.S. 555 (1992) .................................................. 4

Mahmoud v. Taylor,

606 U.S. 522 (2025) ................................................ 14

Meyer v. Nebraska,

262 U.S. 390 (1923) .............................................. 6, 7

Parham v. J.R.,

442 U.S. 584 (1979) ...................................... 9, 11, 18

People ex rel. O’Connell v. Turner,

55 Ill. 280 (1870) .................................................... 10

Perry v. Sindermann,

408 U.S. 593 (1972) ................................................ 14

Pierce v. Society of Sisters,

268 U.S. 510 (1925) ........................................ 3, 8, 13

Prince v. Massachusetts,

321 U.S. 158 (1944) ............................................ 9, 13

Stanley v. Illinois,

405 U.S. 645 (1972) .......................................... 11, 18

Striplin v. Ware,

36 Ala. 87 (1860) .................................................... 10

iii

Troxel v. Granville,

530 U.S. 57 (2000) .................................................... 6

Statutes

2010 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 229 ................................ 15

Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082 (2025) ................ 15, 16

Regulations

RCW 74.09.675 .......................................................... 16

Other Authorities

Aristotle, Politics (H. Rackham trans. 1932).............. 8

Cicero, De Officiis (Walter Miller trans., 1913).......... 8

James Kent, Commentaries on American Law

(New York, O. Halsted 1827)................................... 9

John Austin, Lectures on Jurisprudence (Robert

Campbell ed., 5th ed. 1885) ..................................... 7

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

(1689) ........................................................................ 7

John W. Salmond, Jurisprudence (4th ed. 1913) ....... 7

Joseph Story, Commentaries on Equity

Jurisprudence (2d ed. 1839) .................................. 10

Kasia Kozlowska et al., Australian Children and

Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: Clinical

Presentations and Challenges Experienced by

a Multidisciplinary Team and Gender Service,

1 Human Sys. 1 (2021)........................................... 18

Marcus Evans, Freedom to Think: The Need for

Thorough Assessment and Treatment of

Gender Dysphoric Children, 45 B. J. Psych.

Bull. 285 (2021) ...................................................... 17

Matti Ruuska et al., Psychiatric Morbidity

Among Adolescents and Young Adults Who

Contacted Specialised Gender Identity

Services in Finland in 1996–2019: A Register

Study, 115 Acta Paediatrica 1545 (2026).............. 17

Melissa Moschella, Defending the Fundamental

Rights of Parents: A Response to Recent

Attacks, 37 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub.

Pol’y 397 (2023). ..................................................... 10

William Blackstone, Commentaries (George

Sharswood ed., 1893) ........................................... 6, 7

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE 1

The Ethics and Public Policy Center (“EPPC”) is a

nonprofit research institution applying the JudeoChristian moral tradition to critical issues of public

policy, law, and culture. In pursuit of its mission,

EPPC equips Americans to address today’s ethical,

political, and cultural questions with firm

commitment to human dignity, natural law, and our

constitutional freedoms.

EPPC scholars have particular expertise in the

conflict that underlies this case. EPPC scholars work

to defend the family as the first and most important

institution standing between the individual and the

state. EPPC Senior Fellow Mary Rice Hasson

launched EPPC’s Person and Identity Project 2 to

promote the truth of the human person and equip

parents and faith-based institutions to meet the

challenges of gender ideology. EPPC has filed amicus

briefs in litigation involving gender ideology and

defending parental rights in this Court and in the

courts of appeals, including in Mahmoud v. Taylor,

606 U.S. 522 (2025), United States v. Skrmetti, 605

U.S. 495 (2025), and Chiles v. Salazar, 146 S. Ct. 1010

(2026).

1 Rule 37 statement: All counsel of record were timely notified of

the intent to file this brief. No counsel for any party authored any

part of this brief, and nobody other than amicus and counsel for

amicus contributed monetarily to this brief’s preparation or

submission.

2 https://personandidentity.com/.

INTRODUCTION AND

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

This case asks whether Petitioner Parents have

standing to challenge Washington State laws that help

children who run away to a shelter obtain “genderaffirming treatment” 3 without their parents’

knowledge or consent. The Ninth Circuit panel held

that Petitioner Parents did not have standing,

reasoning that their alleged harms—hesitation to

discipline, silence on the subject of gender,

abandonment of a child’s given name—were “selfinflicted,” because Petitioner Parents had not alleged

“that their or their children’s behavior has yet brought

them within reach of the [laws].” Pet.App.15a–16a. In

the panel’s view, a parent has nothing to complain of

until the State actually has possession of the child.

That holding was possible only because the panel

assumed a particular—and cramped—conception of

parental rights. As Judge VanDyke observed, the

panel “mistakes parental authority for a mere

property interest in the physical possession of a

child—a view long rejected by our court and others.”

Pet.App.36a (VanDyke, J., dissenting from denial of

rehearing en banc). If the parental right merely

entailed a right to custody, then perhaps a parent’s

“legally protected interest” would be injured only when

custody is lost. But this Court has never understood

parental rights that way.

3 This brief uses the term “sex-rejecting interventions” to refer to

services, products, and procedures that support and affirm an

individual’s asserted identity that differs from the individual’s

sex.

For more than a century it has described parental

rights as “coupled with the high duty, to recognize and

prepare [the child] for additional obligations,” Pierce v.

Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925)—the rights

of formation, exercised every day in the words a parent

speaks, the discipline a parent imposes, and the truths

a parent teaches. Those rights are violated when the

State deliberately makes it harder for a fit parent to

take those actions, long before the child actually leaves

home.

This brief builds on Judge VanDyke’s observation

that determining whether a legally protected interest

has been invaded necessarily involves a prior inquiry

into what that legally protected interest entails.

Pet.App.36a. As Judge VanDyke observes, the Ninth

Circuit never explicitly addressed this inquiry.

Part I shows that the panel never asked what the

parents’ “legally protected interest” protects, and so

was in no position to say whether that interest had

been “invaded” or violated. Part II answers that

question from the common law incorporated by this

Court’s cases: parental rights are the correlate of a

natural duty to form the child, discharged in the

ordinary business of family life, and the presumption

that parents are fit may be overcome by the State only

by an individualized finding. Part III shows that

Washington laws violate both aspects—chilling the

exercise of parental duties now and stripping the

presumption of fitness from an entire class of parents

without any particular finding about any of them.

ARGUMENT

I. The panel erred by failing to consider what

parents’ “legally protected interest” entails.

Under Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, to establish

standing a plaintiff must demonstrate an “injury in

fact,” which the Court defined as “an invasion of a

legally protected interest.” 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992).

The definition has two parts: (i) there must be a legally

protected interest and (ii) that interest must be

invaded or violated. These two parts are connected—

and necessarily so.

“Invasion” is the language of trespass and makes

for an apt metaphor here. No court would let a

trespass claim proceed without first determining the

property line. Standing works the same way—a court

cannot say an interest was “invaded” or violated until

it has decided the nature and scope of the protected

interest.

But the panel below failed to make that

determination. Its analysis opens by reciting the

Lujan standard, Pet.App.13a, but then the panel

jumps right to whether Petitioner Parents’ injuries

were “actual or imminent” without considering what

parental rights entail, Pet.App.14a–15a. The panel

makes no claims at all about the scope of parents’

“legally protected interest.” It says only that parents

who had “alter[ed] their parenting styles so that

[Washington laws] cannot affect them” had no injury

because they were not yet “within reach of the [laws].”

Pet.App.15a.

Judge VanDyke, dissenting from the denial of

rehearing en banc, teases out the panel’s unstated

premise. As he sees it, the panel’s holding presumes

that parents’ “legally protected interest” only extends

to “the physical possession of a child.” Pet.App.36a. To

say the laws trespass on parents’ rights only when

their child lands in a state-run shelter is, he argues, to

claim the Constitution only protects “a mere property

interest in the physical possession of a child.”

Pet.App.36a.

Judge VanDyke is right: the panel skipped a key

step in the standing inquiry. While his dissent focuses

on what parental rights are not, Part II below draws

upon the common law tradition to provide a positive

account of parents’ rights by considering their duties.

II. At common law, parental rights correlate

with parents’ broad common law duties—

and include a presumption of fitness only an

individualized finding can overcome.

This Court’s cases draw on the common law to

describe parental rights. Two features of those rights,

discussed below, are especially relevant to

understanding the panel’s error. First, parental rights

correlate with parents’ natural duty to raise their

children. To understand parents’ rights, one must

understand their duty to form their children, the

momentous responsibilities entrusted to them. This

duty is exercised in the ordinary business of family life

or not at all. Second, the law’s presumption that

parents act for their children’s good is more than a

mere courtesy or custom; that presumption—which

can only be overcome by a strong individualized

finding that a parent is not fit—is a part of the right

itself.

A. This Court looks to the common law to

define constitutional rights; at common

law, rights are correlative of duties.

This Court identifies and defines fundamental

rights in light of our Nation’s history and traditions.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215,

231 (2022). And the “fundamental right of parents to

make decisions concerning 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, 65–66 (2000).

In recognizing parental rights, this Court has

looked back not only to our Nation’s history, but also

to the common law. The parental rights recognized by

this Court in Meyer v. Nebraska are the same rights

recognized by the common law for centuries. 262 U.S.

390, 399 (1923) (listing parental rights among the

“privileges long recognized at common law as essential

to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men”).

The common law did not understand rights as freestanding abstractions. Instead, a legal right identified

a legal relationship—and therefore a corresponding

duty. For example, Blackstone began his treatment of

the rights of persons by distinguishing duties “due

from every citizen” from rights belonging “to him,”

while explaining that every social duty, being “of a

relative nature,” must be due both from one person

and to another. Allegiance and protection were

therefore “reciprocally, the rights as well as duties of

each other.” 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *119

(George Sharswood ed., 1893) (emphases added).

Austin later distilled the same structure into a

categorical rule: “every law, really conferring a right,

imposes expressly or tacitly a relative duty, or a duty

correlating with the right.” John Austin, Lectures on

Jurisprudence 100–101 (Robert Campbell ed., 5th ed.

1885) (emphases added). And Salmond put the point

more strongly still: “Rights and duties are necessarily

correlative. There can be no right without a

corresponding duty, or duty without a corresponding

right.” John W. Salmond, Jurisprudence 184 (4th ed.

1913) (emphases added). Thus, in the common law

tradition, a right was not an abstract entitlement

considered in isolation; it was one side of a legal

relationship whose other side was a corresponding

duty.

This general principle is especially clear as to

parental rights: the common law saw parental rights

as the flip side of parental duties, and those duties

came from nature, not from the State. Blackstone

taught that parents’ “power * * * over their children is

derived from * * * their duty,” and exists “to enable the

parent more effectually to perform his duty.” 1

Blackstone *452 (emphases added). These duties were

rooted in nature itself: “[t]he duty of parents to provide

for the maintenance of their children, is a principle of

natural law; an obligation * * * laid on them * * * by

nature herself.” Id. at *447 (emphases added). See

Meyer, 262 U.S. at 400 (grounding the right in “the

natural duty of the parent,” using a formulation taken

nearly verbatim from Blackstone, see 1 Blackstone

*450). Locke said likewise: “The power, then, that

parents have over their children, arises from that duty

which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring, during the imperfect state of childhood.” John

Locke, Second Treatise of Government § 58 (1689)

(emphases added).

The common law reflects a deeper moral tradition,

with a settled understanding of what a family is and

what parents are for. Aristotle identified the

household as the first human community and the seed

of the political order. Aristotle, Politics bk. I, ch. 2 (H.

Rackham trans. 1932). Cicero called the bond between

parents and children one of the first bonds of human

society and called the household “the foundation of

civil government, the nursery, as it were, of the state.”

Cicero, De Officiis bk. I, § 54 (Walter Miller trans.,

1913). On this view the family is a natural institution

that precedes and does not depend on the State.

From the ancient world through the English law to

the present day, there is widespread agreement that

parents’ rights and corresponding duties to their

children are broad. Parental rights were never

reducible to a mere property interest in the child.

Blackstone was explicit that the parent’s power exists

for the child’s sake, so a child’s parents must be free to

carry out their parental duties. The right describes

who has authority to raise the child, and why. And

because a parent’s duty to the child includes the duty

to form the child, the right is exercised in the ordinary

business of family life—in teaching, correcting,

deciding, and preparing the child for adult life.

This Court’s parental rights decisions have drawn

on the common law tradition. Pierce v. Society of

Sisters spoke of parents who “have the right, coupled

with the high duty, to recognize and prepare [the child]

for additional obligations.” 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925)

(emphases added). Prince v. Massachusetts spoke of a

parental “function and freedom” that “include

preparation for obligations the state can neither

supply nor hinder.” 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944). And

Parham v. J.R., addressing the very kind of decision

at issue here, held that “[p]arents can and must make”

judgments about their children’s “need for medical

care or treatment,” and that a child’s disagreement

“does not automatically transfer the power to make

that decision from the parents to some agency or

officer of the state.” 442 U.S. 584, 603 (1979).

The parental rights the Fourteenth Amendment

protects are the common law’s rights: an authority

conferred by nature for the performance of a duty the

State did not create and cannot assume. That duty is

broad and deep; it entails authority over the child’s

formation.

B. Parental rights include a presumption

that parents are fit, rebuttable only by an

individualized finding.

The same common law tradition confirms another

key aspect of parental rights: government may not

interfere in the parent-child relationship without

overcoming a strong presumption that parents act for

their children’s good.

According to Chancellor Kent, the first great

American legal commentator, “The wants and

weaknesses of children render it necessary that some

person maintain them, and the voice of nature has

pointed out the parent as the most fit and proper

person. The laws and customs of all nations have

enforced this plain precept of universal law.” 2 James

Kent, Commentaries on American Law 159 (New York,

O. Halsted 1827). See also Melissa Moschella,

Defending the Fundamental Rights of Parents: A

Response to Recent Attacks, 37 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics

& Pub. Pol’y 397, 409–418 (2023).

This presumption is so strong that the State may

step in only when the “natural presumption[] that the

children will be properly taken care of” is overcome by

proof of “gross ill treatment.” 2 Joseph Story,

Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence § 1341 (2d

ed. 1839). American courts said the same thing around

the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.

Parents’ rights under “common law” are such that “the

parental authority will not be interfered with, except

in case of gross misconduct, or where, from some other

cause, the parent wants either the capacity or the

means for the proper nurture and training of the

child.” Striplin v. Ware, 36 Ala. 87, 89–90 (1860). The

government could not interfere with paternal rights

unless there “are well-founded apprehensions of the

father’s acting with extreme harshness or cruelty, or

with gross profligacy or immoral conduct, so that the

child would be in danger of contamination.” Cocke v.

Hannum, 39 Miss. 423, 441 (Miss. Err. & App. 1860).

The parent has the right to the care, custody

and assistance of his child. The duty to

maintain and protect it, is a principle of natural

law. * * * Before any abridgment of the right,

gross misconduct or almost total unfitness on

the part of the parent, should be clearly proved.

People ex rel. O’Connell v. Turner, 55 Ill. 280, 284–285

(1870).

A hundred years later, this Court reiterated the

same rule in Parham:

The law’s concept of the family rests on a

presumption that parents possess what a child

lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for

judgment required for making life’s difficult

decisions. More important, historically it has

recognized that natural bonds of affection lead

parents to act in the best interests of their

children.

442 U.S. at 602. As such, the presumption in favor of

the parents is difficult to dislodge:

Simply because the decision of a parent is not

agreeable to a child or because it involves risks

does not automatically transfer the power to

make that decision from the parents to some

agency or officer of the state. * * * Most children,

even in adolescence, simply are not able to make

sound judgments concerning many decisions,

including their need for medical care or

treatment. Parents can and must make those

judgments. * * * The fact that a child may balk

at hospitalization or complain about a parental

refusal to provide cosmetic surgery does not

diminish the parents’ authority to decide what

is best for the child. * * * Neither state officials

nor federal courts are equipped to review such

parental decisions.

442 U.S. at 603–604 (noting the trial court had not

identified “even a single instance of bad faith by any

parent of any member of appellees’ class”). See also

Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 649 (1972) (father

“entitled to a hearing on his fitness as a parent before

his children were taken from him”).

Kent’s “voice of nature,” Story’s “natural

presumption,” and Parham’s “natural bonds of

affection” all describe the same thing: the law

recognizes that a parent is charged by nature with the

child’s care; the law therefore presumes a parent is the

person most likely to act for the child’s good. This

presumption of fitness is a part of the common law and

is a fundamental aspect of parental rights. A State

that dispenses with that presumption without a

specific, individual finding that proves “gross

misconduct or almost total unfitness” does more than

merely shift a procedural burden—it invades a legally

protected right.

III. Parents have standing because Washington

laws invade their legally protected interests.

The historical overview in Part II helps explain

why the Washington laws invade parents’ legally

protected interests. Measured against that history,

Washington laws invade Petitioner Parents’ legally

protected interest in at least two independent ways.

A. Washington laws invade parents’ right to

carry out their common law duties free

from state coercion.

Petitioner Parents have children who have shown

signs of gender dysphoria. These parents have

identified concrete ways that Washington laws have

constricted their ability to form their children by

changing the way they have carried out their parental

duties toward their children:

•

Parent 2A “does not use [her daughter’s] given

name in public or use any pronouns when

referring to her.” Pet.App.73a,¶¶26–28.

•

Parents 2A and 2B avoid discussing gender

issues with or around their daughter.

Pet.App.73a,¶29.

•

Parent 1A hesitates to discipline her child for

fear it will cause a rift that a youth shelter

might cite to justify sex-rejecting

interventions. Pet.App.71a,¶16.

The panel frames these changes as mere

alterations of “parenting styles,” as if a parent’s right

to form a child were reducible to a superficial “style.”

Pet.App.15a. This Court’s cases, and the common law

understanding of the nature of parental rights, refute

that characterization. See supra Part II.A.

Discipline, moral instruction, and the name a

mother calls her child are not incidental to parental

rights. They are not “voluntary” choices. See

Pet.App.15a. They are parental rights in action. The

right “to recognize and prepare [the child] for

additional obligations,” Pierce, 268 U.S. at 535, is

exercised in these ways or it is not exercised at all.

The Washington laws thus trespass on parents’

“legally protected interest” long before their child runs

away to a shelter. Judge VanDyke put it well: “the real

harm to parents from Washington’s legal regime

happens long before a child runs away.” Pet.App.44a.

Washington has given every minor who, despite

parental opposition, seeks sex-rejecting interventions

a legally guaranteed alternative pathway. Petitioner

Parents have alleged that this open doorway

“hinder[s]” the way they are carrying out their

“primary function.” Prince, 321 U.S. at 166. As Judge

VanDyke observed, “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.”

Pet.App.48a.

The panel below acknowledged that self-censorship

can confer standing but held that the rule applies only

when the plaintiff’s own speech “arguably falls within

the statute’s reach.” Pet.App.16a–17a. Mahmoud v.

Taylor, 606 U.S. 522 (2025), says otherwise. The school

board’s policy in Mahmoud regulated teachers and

curricula, not parents. Yet this Court held that

parents were burdened the moment the board’s

instruction “pose[d] a very real threat of undermining”

what they wished to teach their children, and it

refused to make them “wait and see” whether the

threat would be carried out. Id. at 559–560. The

reason is one this Court has stated for half a century:

government may not do indirectly what it could not

“command directly,” and a law that “penalize[s] and

inhibit[s]” the exercise of a constitutional right

infringes it. Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597

(1972).

Similarly, here, while Washington laws regulate

shelters, the threat lands on parents. Indeed, the

record shows this includes Petitioner Parents—who

have stopped talking to their children about gender,

stopped using their daughter’s name, and stopped

disciplining their child. Pet.App.16a. That is an injury

to parents’ interests under Mahmoud. See 606 U.S. at

559–560.

B. Washington laws strip parents of the

presumption of fitness without an

individualized finding.

The challenged laws also invade parental rights

because they overturn, without any individualized

finding, the natural presumption that parents act in

their children’s best interests. This becomes clear by

viewing the challenged 2023 amendments in context.

Start with the general rule: when a runaway child

appears at a licensed shelter in Washington, the

shelter must notify the parents promptly. See Wash.

Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) (2025); Pet.App.52a

(Tung, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc)

(same). When passing this law, the Washington

legislature found that “parents of runaway youth have

an interest in knowing their sons and daughters are

safe in a shelter, rather than on the streets,” and that

shelters “are a critical pathway to ensuring the youth’s

return home.” 2010 Wash. Sess. Laws, ch. 229, § 1.

This general requirement honors the parental rights

described above. See supra Part II.B.

This general rule is subject to a longstanding

exception: the shelter must not contact the child’s

parents when “compelling reasons” exist. Wash. Rev.

Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i). Prior to the 2023

amendments, the law enumerated only one

“compelling reason[]”: if circumstances indicated that

notifying the parents would subject the child to abuse

or neglect. Wash. Rev. Code § 13.32A.082(1)(b)(i) and

(2)(c)(i) (2025). This “compelling reason” standard

conforms, at least in structure, to the common law

rule: it turns on circumstances particular to a given

child and his or her parent. See supra Part II.B.

But when the legislature amended this law in 2023,

it created a second “compelling reason” that is not

subject to an individualized finding. This addition says

a shelter is prohibited from contacting a child’s

parents if the runaway minor is “seeking or receiving”

“gender-affirming treatment.” Wash. Rev. Code §

13.32A.082(2)(c)(ii) and (2)(d) (2025); Pet.App.52a

(Tung, J., dissenting) (same). As the original “abuse or

neglect” exception makes clear, this amendment “now

treats the parents of children suffering from gender

dysphoria as per se neglectful or abusive.” Pet.App.38a

(VanDyke, J., dissenting).

The second exception to the parental notice

requirement overturns the common law’s strong

presumption of parents’ fitness in two key ways.

First, it precludes any individualized finding

relevant to the child’s circumstances. On its face, the

law blocks a shelter from contacting a child’s parents

as soon as the child says he or she is seeking sexrejecting interventions. The law defines “genderaffirming treatment” as services prescribed by a

health care provider “to support and affirm the

individual’s gender identity.” RCW 74.09.675(3). But

Washington’s parental notice ban does not require

that the child is receiving “gender-affirming

treatment,” as parents are cut out as soon as the child

says he or she is “seeking” such treatment. No inquiry

is required—and none would matter—as to why the

child is seeking such treatment or for how long the

child has been seeking such treatment.

The law does not even allow a shelter room to make

an individualized assessment based on whether the

child has even talked to his or her parents about sex-

rejecting interventions. So long as a child tells a

shelter that he or she is seeking sex-rejecting

interventions—for whatever reason, or even for the

first time—Washington law says shelters must keep

parents in the dark as to their missing child’s

whereabouts.

Second, the law precludes any individualized

findings relevant to the parents’ circumstances. A child

may reject his or her sex or express a desire for sexrejecting interventions for reasons that are varied and

complex. For some children, the desire for sexrejecting interventions appears to be a maladaptive

response to traumatic or challenging circumstances,

including the distress of puberty; difficult peer

relationships, bullying, and the influence of social

media; and feeling “different” (children with autism or

who experience same-sex attraction often report

feeling different and are over-represented among

children who identify as “transgender”). 4 Children

who identify as “transgender” are highly likely to have

preceding or co-occurring mental health issues, such

as depression, anxiety, and trauma (including

physical, sexual, and emotional abuse), that need

separate diagnoses and treatments. 5

4 Marcus Evans, Freedom to Think: The Need for Thorough

Assessment and Treatment of Gender Dysphoric Children, 45 B.

J. Psych. Bull. 285 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.72.

5 Matti Ruuska et al., Psychiatric Morbidity Among Adolescents

and Young Adults Who Contacted Specialised Gender Identity

Services in Finland in 1996–2019: A Register Study, 115 Acta

Paediatrica 1545 (2026), https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.70533; Kasia

Kozlowska et al., Australian Children and Adolescents with

Gender Dysphoria: Clinical Presentations and Challenges

All of these circumstances call for careful parental

discernment, discussion, and guidance—on a

timetable conducive to the child’s development. These

decisions are best left to those who know the child best:

his or her parents. As Parham recognized, the “natural

bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best

interests of their children.” 442 U.S. at 602. Parents

are presumed to be in the best position to know their

child’s medical and social history, and thus, best

positioned to make judgments—together with the

child’s health care providers—about the best way to

respond to and treat a child’s expressed desire for sexrejecting interventions (subject, of course, to lawful

state regulation). The common law affirms that

parents are entitled to make these decisions, and are

entitled to the strong presumption that they will make

these decisions with their child’s best interests at

heart. But Washington law denies parents these

rights.

Stanley teaches that a categorical presumption of

unfitness is itself a constitutional wrong. The State

“registers no gain” by presuming a parent unfit, and

“procedure by presumption” runs “roughshod over the

important interests of both parent and child.” 405 U.S.

at 652, 656–657. The injury was the presumption, not

only its later consequences. As shown above, the

presumption of fitness is part of the parental right

itself. Washington law strips that presumption from

Petitioner Parents.

Experienced by a Multidisciplinary Team and Gender Service, 1

Human

Sys.

(2021),

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26344041211010777.

***

When the State causes fit parents to truncate or

restrict the exercise of their parental rights to avoid

losing their children, the State has not merely

inconvenienced the parents. It has taken part of the

parents’ authority over the formation of their own

children. That injures parents’ legally protected

interests.

CONCLUSION

The Ninth Circuit should be reversed.

Respectfully submitted.