Parents, Know Your Rights as School Begins
By Ian Prior
If you have school-age children, you may be worrying about what your kids will be exposed to when class resumes. Will teachers ask them for “preferred pronouns,” rather than teach them standard English? If your son is confused about his sex, will the school encourage him in the belief that he is a girl and conceal it from you? Will your daughters be forced to share a locker room with boys? More generally, will the school propagandize your children about controversial social topics without your knowledge or consent?
These are real dangers that are the subject of school board battles, federal investigations and lawsuits across the country, as parents increasingly challenge policies that infringe on their authority and they believe harm their children.
The good news is that parents are no longer powerless. Recent Supreme Court decisions, combined with an administration committed to enforcing federal law, have significantly strengthened parental rights. Here’s what you need to know as your children go back to school:
• You have the right to opt out. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the justices held that the Montgomery County, Md., public schools had violated parents’ First Amendment rights by refusing to provide notice and opportunity to opt out of instruction involving “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks for parents who objected on religious grounds.
This March, in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the court issued an unsigned order that further reinforced those protections. The justices said that a school’s facilitation of a child’s “gender transition” without parental consent likely violates the parents’ right to direct their children’s upbringing and education. Taken together, these decisions make clear that school districts must provide parents the ability to opt their children out of sex-related policies the parents find objectionable.
America First Legal has made available an opt-out template letter for parents to personalize and send to their children’s school demanding that schools comply with their requests on these issues. Courts will treat failure to comply with these requests as an unconstitutional deprivation of a parent’s constitutional rights.
• The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act gives parents the right to their children’s records. Ferpa, which Congress enacted in 1974, provides parents the right to inspect “records, files, documents, and other materials which contain information directly related” to their children. This extremely broad definition may include records related to “gender identity,” including the use of different names or pronouns that don’t match the child’s sex. Schools that fail to comply with Ferpa can lose federal funding.
Many school districts intentionally keep records related to a student’s “gender identity” in a separate system precisely to prevent parents
from accessing them. This practice has led the Education Department to launch investigations and refer enforcement actions to the Justice Department. Parents seeking their children’s educational records should therefore clearly state that the request is being made under Ferpa, and they should specifically demand that all records related to “gender identity” be included. If the school denies any part of the request or is clearly withholding records, parents should file a formal complaint with the Education Department.
• Parents have the right to review curriculum under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. The PPRA, which became law in 1978, gives parents the right to inspect instructional materials used in connection with their child’s education. Unlike a typical public-records request, PPRA prohibits schools from imposing fees. The statute also generally prohibits schools from requiring students to answer surveys concerning highly personal subjects relating to the student or his family—including political beliefs, religious beliefs, mental or psychological issues, sexual behavior, finances or other sensitive matters— without parental consent.
America First Legal has a PPRA toolkit with more information and a sample demand letter to schools to ensure that parents’ rights under PPRA are respected.
• Title IX protects sex-separated spaces. This provision of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” and it applies to all schools that receive federal funds. In June of this year, the Supreme Court held in B.P.J. v. West Virginia that the term “sex” as used in Title IX and its regulations “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”
As a result, schools can’t credibly claim that Title IX requires them to permit students to access oppositesex restrooms or locker rooms. The Education Department has made clear that this is a violation of Title IX. Parents who are confronted with this situation can file a Title IX complaint with the Education Department or directly sue the school system on their child’s behalf under Title IX.
America’s schools exist to educate children, not to replace parents. The Constitution and federal statutes— bolstered by recent Supreme Court decisions and Trump administration regulations—guarantee that parents have the primary responsibility for directing their children’s upbringing.
But legal rights mean little if parents don’t exercise them. As students return to school this fall, parents should know they have the power to exercise their rights, ask questions, request records, review instructional materials, and insist that schools respect the cherished role our Constitution assigns to families, not government officials.
Mr. Prior is senior counsel at America First Legal and the author of “Parents of the World Unite.”
