“Few things more terrifying”: Parents appeal to SCOTUS to fight state law keeping runaway gender-confused kids from non-conforming parents 

Parents are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to approve their legal battle against a Washington state law that hides runaway children from parents who disapprove of gender ideology, labeling them “abusive and neglectful.”

“At its core, this case is about every parent’s right to protect their child, and more specifically, in this instance, it’s the right to go to court to protect your child,” First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Ryan Gardner told Heartlander News in an interview. “Because what we’re dealing with is a situation here where the parents went to court to protect their children and were told that they couldn’t do so because they hadn’t been injured yet, and frankly, a right isn’t really a right at all if you can’t go to court to defend it.”

In 2023, the Washington Senate passed Amendment 5599, which requires youth shelters to contact the state instead of the parents if they find a runaway child struggling with gender ideology who claims his or her parents do not affirm his or her identity.

“There are a few things that are more terrifying to a parent than having your child run away from home and having no idea where your child is or how that child is doing,” Gardner said. “That is a nightmare for any parent, and this makes it worse because the state is not going to give you any information, even if they have it.”

Previously, shelters were required to contact parents within 24-72 hours of finding the child, unless they had reason to believe the parents were “abusive or neglectful,” according to the brief.

“The amendments thus treat parents unwilling to affirm their gender-confused children as legally comparable to abusive or neglectful parents,” the brief states. “The amendments thus strip them of legal protections they formerly possessed. And the amendments create incentives to run away only for the children of those parents, since children of ‘affirming’ parents would have parental support in obtaining transition treatments.”

The shelters not only won’t contact parents but can refer the child for gender “services” without parental consent.

“And with the amendments, parents of a child who runs away and seeks any of those ‘services’ have now lost the right to be involved in that decision,” the brief continues. “They cannot deny consent, counsel with their child about the decision or even provide consent and assist their child during treatment. And all because the State makes the decision for them.”

Supreme Court to rule on legal standing

Shortly after the amendment passed, a group of parents sued the state, arguing that the law violates their parental rights. The Ninth Circuit denied the parents’ standing to sue, claiming they have not suffered real harm to warrant a lawsuit. The Supreme Court has now accepted the parents’ appeal on the question of whether they have standing to sue and will hear oral arguments Dec. 7, 2026, according to a press release from First Liberty, the firm representing the plaintiffs.

“Parental rights is one of the most foundational rights in this country, and it doesn’t mean much if you don’t get to assert those rights until after you’ve lost your child,” Gardner said, adding that the parents are suffering real harm now.

Many parents have censored their own speech in their homes regarding sex pronouns or altered their preferred parenting styles out of fear that their child may run away to the state, he explained.

“Parents are afraid to use their child’s name in public,” Gardner said. “Parents are afraid in the conversations that they can have with their own child in their own home for fear of offending that child, who might be who would be incentivized by the state now to run away.”

Additionally, the amendment violates the “target-of-the-law” principle that prohibits laws from isolating a specific group of people and holding them to a different standard, Gardner explained. Parents who do not affirm gender ideology are the target under this amendment, which squashes their rights to information, consent and reunion with their child. The “target-of-the-law” principle has sufficed as appropriate standing to sue for more than 100 years, according to the brief.

The altered law now threatens parents whose views on gender differ from the state’s with the underlying possibility of losing their child, the brief argues, saying the “Sword of Damocles” hangs over households in Washington.

“That’s an expression basically used for a sword hanging over everything that you do,” Gardner explained. “Think of it as a constant threat in every household now across the state of Washington. There is the sword of the state that is just there, waiting to drop if you have the wrong beliefs and the state disagrees with you.”

The Supreme Court will only determine whether the parents have standing to sue. If the Court rules favorably, parents will then have to argue the meat of their case against the discriminatory amendment before a U.S. District Court in Washington, Gardner said, adding that “the wheels of justice often grind slower than we wish that they would.”

“The goal of the state should be reunification of families, not the separation of children from their parents,” said Gene Schaerr, managing partner at Schaerr | Jaffe, the second law firm representing the plaintiffs. “When governments usurp the essential role of loving parents in the lives of their children, tragedy is inevitable.”

(Image credit: Heartlander News/Adam Wittenberg)