Supreme Court rejects Florida parents’ challenge to school gender-identity policy

The Supreme Court turned away a Florida couple’s challenge to Leon County Schools’ handling of a 13-year-old student’s gender identity, leaving intact a ruling that said the district did not violate parental rights when staff met with the child and created a “Student Support Plan” without the parents’ involvement.

January Littlejohn and Jeffrey Littlejohn had argued that officials at Deerlake Middle School in Tallahassee crossed a constitutional line when they allowed their child to use a different name and they/them pronouns at school without notifying them. The appeal asked the court to revive their claim that the school board’s policy infringed their substantive due-process right to direct their child’s upbringing.

The justices’ refusal to hear January Littlejohn, et vir, v. School Board of Leon County, Florida, et al., No. 25-259, does not amount to a ruling on the merits. It leaves the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in place for Leon County School Board and Superintendent Rocky Hanna, but it does not set a nationwide constitutional rule on how schools must handle transgender or nonbinary students or parental notification.

That 11th Circuit ruling came down on March 12, 2025, and the full court later denied rehearing on July 17, 2025. The case was docketed at the Supreme Court on September 5, 2025, and the court declined to hear it on April 20, 2026. The appellate panel said school officials, acting under district guidelines then in effect, developed the support plan for and with the student, without the Littlejohns’ involvement and contrary to their wishes.

The result fits a broader pattern: the justices have repeatedly sidestepped school-based parental-rights disputes over gender identity when the case does not present a cleaner constitutional vehicle. That leaves lower courts to sort out conflicts between parents’ claims of control over a child’s upbringing and school districts’ efforts to protect student privacy, often case by case and often under revised local policies that can make the underlying dispute harder to squarely review.

The Leon County case has drawn national attention because it sits at the intersection of public education, family rights, and transgender student privacy. But the Supreme Court’s denial means the fight continues in the lower courts and in school districts trying to balance parental notification rules with the privacy interests of students who may not be ready to disclose their gender identity at home.