International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson

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) (Alita, 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 "gender affirming 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 decision-making 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.

Washington State historically required licensed youth shelters to notify parents within 72 hours whenever a runaway minor arrived at their facility, including the child’s exact location, physical and emotional condition, and the circumstances of arrival. Parents could then retrieve their child immediately. The only exception to that notification requirement arose when informing parents would expose the minor to abuse or neglect. In 2023, Washington enacted two laws—Senate Bill 5599 and House Bill 1406—that fundamentally changed this framework. The amendments added a second exception to the parental-notification requirement: whenever a runaway minor is “seeking or receiving protected health care services,” which the legislature defined to include “gender-affirming treatment.” Under the amended law, a shelter receiving such a child must notify the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) instead of the parents. DCYF must then make only a “good faith attempt” to contact parents—which, under implementing policy, means asking the child whether to provide parental contact information—and must offer to refer the minor for “appropriate behavioral health services” without any required parental involvement. The law sets no timeline for reunification in the gender-affirming-care scenario, and parents receive no information about the child’s location or condition. The petitioners are five sets of parents proceeding under pseudonyms, all Washington residents whose children experience gender dysphoria and who refuse to affirm a gender identity contrary to their children’s biological sex. Most of the parents discovered their children had already been socially transitioned at school without their knowledge. One family’s child had previously run away from home. Others faced explicit threats—from older siblings or community members—to take their gender-dysphoric children to “safe places” that would affirm a cross-sex identity. Because of the new laws, the parents allege concrete present harms: one mother stopped disciplining her daughter for fear of provoking a runaway situation that would trigger the statute; another parent ceased using her daughter’s given name in public to avoid conflict; and two parents stopped discussing gender with or near their daughter entirely. The parents sued Washington state officials in the Western District of Washington shortly after the laws took effect, arguing the statutes violated their constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing, refuse medical treatment on their children’s behalf, raise their children consistent with their religious faith, and speak freely on matters of gender. After the parents filed a First Amended Complaint in November 2023, the district court dismissed the action with prejudice for lack of standing in May 2024, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in July 2025, with the court denying rehearing en banc in December 2025 over the dissents of three judges who concluded the parents had adequately alleged both present and future injuries sufficient to confer standing.