Supreme Court to Hear Major Parental Rights Case

Washington, DC – June 29, 2026

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson (25-840), a critical parental rights case in which America’s Frontline Doctors filed an amici curiae brief earlier this year.

The Court will now hear arguments on whether Washington State’s 2023 Family Reconciliation Act amendments unconstitutionally displace fit parents from medical decision-making for their gender-confused children. Under the challenged law, if a minor runs away and claims to seek “gender-affirming treatment,” the state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Family Services (DCYF) may withhold the child’s location and condition from parents, delay reunification, and facilitate medical interventions without parental notice or consent. Parents who refuse to affirm gender confusion are treated as presumptively unfit — without due process or any finding of abuse or neglect.

The harms are severe and immediate. The Petitioners are mothers and fathers raising children struggling with gender confusion. These parents seek to raise their children in accordance with biological reality. They now live under a legal regime that incentivizes vulnerable children to flee, empowers the state to withhold critical information, and clears a path for interventions that can permanently alter a child’s body and future.

This case centers on a foundational constitutional principle: the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children is among the oldest fundamental liberty interests recognized by the Supreme Court. As highlighted in AFLDS’ documentary What Is A Doctor?, we maintain that “gender-affirming” interventions are not neutral health care. Secret behavioral affirmation is the first step in an ideological process that conditions children to reject biological reality and normalizes a trajectory toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, irreversible sterilization, permanent loss of sexual function, lifelong medical dependency, and surgical mutilation of healthy bodies. Parents have the fundamental right and duty to intervene before their children are placed on that path.

AFLDS Founder and President Dr. Simone Gold stated: “Today’s grant of certiorari is a major victory for parental rights and a critical rebuke to state overreach. The government has no authority to brand fit parents as unfit simply because they refuse to participate in the medical mutilation of their children. Gender ideology denies biological reality and demands obedience to a false construct over truth. Parents answer for their children before God — not before bureaucrats. The Constitution protects families, not ideology.”

AFLDS attorney David Dalia added, “This case presents a direct and deliberate usurpation of the parental role. Washington State’s law does not merely intrude upon parental authority — it obliterates it. Standing doctrine cannot be manipulated to shield that usurpation from constitutional review. When parents are the very target of a statute, they must be allowed into court to defend their families.”

This case carries national significance. Alongside cases like Regino v. Blake, International Partners will help determine whether parents retain the constitutional authority to raise and protect their children, or whether states may evade judicial review while asserting control over children under the guise of “protected health care.”

AFLDS will continue to fight nationwide to defend parental rights, protect children, and restrain unlawful government usurpation.

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Media Contact Lisa Alexander, Executive Director | [email protected]