The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case from parents who sued a Florida school district for allegedly socially transitioning their daughter without their consent or knowledge.
The High Court denied the parents’ request without any comment in the case of Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County, allowing an order for the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the 11th Circuit siding with the school district to stand, The Christian Post reported.
The Littlejohns filed a lawsuit in October of 2021 after learning that officials at Deerlake Middle School in Tallahassee, part of the School Board of Leon County, had made a social transition plan for their then-13-year-old daughter who self-identified as nonbinary. The parents allege the school did not obtain their consent before enacting the plan that treated their daughter as a boy while at school.
The child’s mother, January Littlejohn, told the outlet in an earlier interview that she believed school officials were “colluding with my daughter to deceive us so that we would never have known she was going by an alternate name.” Littlejohn also told the outlet in 2021 that other parents in Leon County had allegedly found themselves in a similar predicament but were afraid to speak out.
“It’s the first step toward medical transitioning,” she said. “Which is why it is so imperative that parents be included [in] any discussion with their child that could impact the short-term and long-term mental and physical well-being of their child, whether it’s this issue or any issue.”
A district court first ruled against the Littlejohns, concluding in part that their allegations were moot after new standards were released in 2022 for students who are “exhibiting gender confusion,” according to the report.
Then in 2025, a three-judge panel for the Eleventh Circuit ruled 2-1 against the Littlejohns, with Obama-appointee Judge Robin Rosenbaum writing that the school’s actions did not “shock the conscience.”
“Defendants did not remove the Littlejohns’ child from their custody,” Rosenbaum wrote. “Defendants did not force the Littlejohns’ child to do anything at all.”
“The child was not physically harmed, much less permanently so… And perhaps most importantly, Defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child,” the judge continued.
READ MORE: Trump Honors Mom Who Saved Daughter from School’s Secret Gender Transition
Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, a 96-year-old Ford appointee, penned a dissenting opinion, pointing out that the “Supreme Court has continued to affirm the proposition that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in raising their children.”
“Today’s decision ignores bedrock separation of powers principles, waters down fundamental rights, and flies in the face of our prior panel precedent rule,” he wrote. “It is as wrong as it is ominous for the future of fundamental rights in the Eleventh Circuit.”
Despite the Supreme Court’s denial in the Florida case, justices have repeatedly ruled in favor of parental rights. In a similar case in March, the Supreme Court issued a ruling blocking California schools from hiding students’ “gender transitions” from parents.
The majority wrote in their opinion for that case that religious parents, as well as parents who object purely because they believe they have the right to direct the upbringing of their children, are likely to succeed on the merits of their case and face irreparable harm if the policy is not halted during the lengthy litigation process. The court also cited its June 2025 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which justice sided with religious parents who sued their Maryland school board over its refusal to allow K-5 children to opt out of LGBTQ+ curricula.
“We conclude that the parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim. California’s policies likely trigger strict scrutiny under that provision because they substantially interfere with the right of parents to guide the religious development of their children,” the majority wrote. “The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California’s policies violate those beliefs and impose the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable. Indeed, the intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud.”
“California’s policies will likely not survive the strict scrutiny that Mahmoud demands. The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy. But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents,” they continued.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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