This week, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an amicus brief for the case International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson, for which oral arguments will be heard by the Supreme Court in December.
The case started in 2023 when a group of parents sued the state of Washington under Governor Bob Ferguson when a law pertaining to parental rights changed.
Historically, if a child ran away and ended up at a youth shelter, the shelter was required to contact the parents immediately, unless the shelter believed contacting the parents would expose them to abuse.
In 2023, however, the law expanded that exception to include children seeking “gender transitions,” even if there was no suspicion of abuse or neglect from the parents.
In those cases, youth shelters could effectively hide a child’s location from parents and instead direct them to the Department of Children, Youth, & Families to “then steer the child toward services that support that transition and delay the child’s return home with no set deadline.”
The effect is that parents who do not support or affirm a “gender transition” are treated the same as abusive parents by the state of Washington.
“Parents should NEVER be kept in the dark about transgender-related medical decisions involving their children,” the DOJ account wrote on X, attaching its amicus brief to the case.
“When the state tries to step in between parents and their children, parents deserve their day in court to challenge that attempt to undermine their basic parental rights.”
After the parents initially sued in Washington, a district court dismissed the case for lack of standing in May 2024. In July 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision. The parents asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case, but in December 2025, the court affirmed the dismissal of the case for lack of standing again, but three of the judges dissented.
In January 2026, the parents petitioned the US Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, asking the higher court to review the lower court’s decision. In June, SCOTUS granted that request.
This week, Becket Law, a religious liberty law firm, also filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Catholic parents from Indiana whose son was taken away by the state after they did not refer to him with a different name and pronouns.
The states of Idaho and Florida also led a multi-state charge in filing an amicus brief in the case as well, with the following states signing on: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Several other major organizations like America’s Frontline Doctors and the American College of Pediatricians have filed briefs of their own in support of the parents.
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