A federal judge ordered California officials to pay $4.52 million in attorneys’ fees to a coalition that successfully sued over the state’s public school policy allowing student gender transitions to be hidden from parents.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, granted the coalition of parents and teachers who sued the state over its public school policy allowing secret gender transitions, which he ruled late last year unconstitutionally hides information about children from their parents, their request for the state to pay attorneys’ fees. The judge said the price tag was so high because the case began in 2023 and is still moving through a federal appeals court.
“The case concerns a very important subject,” Benitez wrote in his ruling on attorneys’ fees. “State public education policies impinged on families’ right to the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. The policies also rejected and subverted the federal constitutional rights of California parents to guide the health and well-being of their school-age children. Such concerns intrude among the most important areas of family life in America’s history and tradition.”
Benitez also took aim at California officials for tactics in the case that wasted “scarce judicial resources,” and for their attempt to push two “inarguably meritless” arguments that were later dropped. The two arguments included insisting that the case was moot until it was eventually shown that state officials were still pushing the unlawful policy, and claiming that the coalition was not the winning party in the case, until the Supreme Court granted emergency relief to the coalition earlier this month.
Benitez granted a class-wide injunction, effectively striking down the policy statewide, against California officials, meaning they could no longer socially transition a student’s gender in school and hide that information from parents.
The policy at the center of the dispute allowed teachers and school employees to let a male student use a female name and pronouns and use the girls’ bathrooms during school hours and intentionally hide that information from his parents. California officials defended the policy as necessary to protect children, but Benitez said in his December 2025 ruling that “such a policy cannot be implemented at the expense of parents’ constitutional rights.”
A federal appeals court halted Benitez’s injunction in January, but the Supreme Court on its emergency docket earlier this month allowed Benitez’s block of the policy to be reinstated as the case continues in the appeals court. The high court’s 6-3 order pointed to its 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which upheld parents’ rights to opt their children out of LGBT materials at school and found that not permitting such an option violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
“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,” the Supreme Court’s per curiam order said.
“Under long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,’” the order added. “The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
The Thomas More Society, which has backed the coalition that sued California over its public school policy, heralded the ruling as another major victory in its legal war over the policy in the Golden State and beyond.
“A $4.5 million fee award sends an unmistakable message to state governments and school districts across the country: if you trample the constitutional rights of parents, you will pay for it—literally,” Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More Society, said in a statement Tuesday. “California threw everything it had at this case. It lost at summary judgment, lost at the Supreme Court, and now Californians will foot the bill for their government officials’ refusal to respect the fundamental rights of families.”
PRESSURE MOUNTS ON SUPREME COURT TO TAKE UP CASE THAT TESTS SECRET GENDER TRANSITIONS AT SCHOOLS
While the Supreme Court issued an order on its emergency docket on how the justices would likely rule in the case on the merits, the justices have two pending petitions on its merits docket over secret school gender transitions that they could take up in the next term. The court has not yet taken up a secret gender transition case on the merits.
The justices are slated to discuss petitions to hear two cases, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee and Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County, during their closed-door conference on Thursday, with a decision on whether they will hear either case as early as Monday morning.