Alaska has signed onto a multistate “friend of the court” brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a lower-court ruling that California public schools cannot hide a student’s so-called gender-identity “change” from parents.

The Sept. 2 brief is led by Florida and Idaho and joined by Alaska and 14 other states that support California teachers and parents who challenged the state’s policy requiring schools to socially “transition” students while keeping parents in the dark.

The filing matters for Alaska because the state is under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, and the court’s decision could set binding precedent from Anchorage to San Diego on how far parental-rights doctrine reaches when schools treat a child’s sex differently from what parents know.

The brief recounts a junior-high girl whose parents learned she had been treated as a boy at school for most of a year only after she attempted suicide.

The case began in 2023 when Escondido Union School District teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West sued over policies they said forced them to conceal students’ gender identities from families. Parents later joined. U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez permanently enjoined the policies in December 2025, holding that parents have a constitutional right to be told if a child expresses “gender incongruence” at school. The Ninth Circuit blocked that injunction. In March 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the stay with regard to parents, and sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit to determine what impact California’s law has with regard to teachers.

The states’ brief argues that parental authority over a child’s upbringing is “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” recognized by the Supreme Court. Government, they write, does not create that authority; it must respect it. They say California inverted that order by treating schools as the first decision-makers on social transition — names, pronouns and how a child is treated at school — even over a parent’s express objection.

The brief recounts a junior high girl whose parents learned she had been treated as a boy at school for most of a year only after she attempted suicide. After they transferred her and demanded notice, officials still refused, citing state policy.

The amici brief calls social transition a serious psychosocial intervention that can “concretize” gender dysphoria and carry lasting mental-health risks. They cite Justice Thomas’s concurrence in United States v. Skrmetti questioning the evidence behind some medical-association guidance.

California and civil-liberties groups defending the policies say they protect student privacy and safety, especially for youths who fear being “outed” at home. The states reply that the Constitution does not let officials presume parents unfit and that similar “secret transition” rules now cover more than 1,200 districts and about 12.3 million public-school students — roughly a quarter of K–12 enrollment nationwide. New York and New Jersey guidance, they argue, shows the issue is not confined to one state.

The brief asks the Ninth Circuit to “support parental rights nationwide.” For Alaska, the outcome of the case may serve as a template for how school districts handle parental notice when a student seeks a different name or pronouns. The court has not yet scheduled argument.

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