As reported by Just The News, California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office is pressing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to alter a permanent injunction that the Supreme Court itself reinstated, one that blocks public schools from hiding students' gender transitions from their parents.

The Thomas More Society, representing the parent-plaintiffs, fired back Tuesday with an opposition brief arguing the 9th Circuit has no authority to touch what the nation's highest court has already decided.

The maneuver is straightforward: if you can't beat the Supreme Court, find a friendlier venue to rewrite what the Supreme Court ordered. And there is no friendlier venue for California than the 9th Circuit, reportedly the most overturned federal appellate court since 2007.

What the Supreme Court Actually Did

Earlier this month, a six-justice majority reinstated U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez's permanent injunction against California's so-called "gender secrecy policies" in public schools. The Court held that the 9th Circuit had wrongly limited its 2025 parental rights precedent in Mahmoud to curricular decisions, passing over a century of sweeping parental rights precedents in the process. It cited a 2024 New York Times column about detransitioners. Three justices joined in concurrence.

The injunction, as Benitez framed it, exists for a specific reason:

"This injunction is intended to promote child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions of their children's lives while permitting the State to shield children from unfit parents by enforcing child-abuse laws in cases of compelling need."

That language is precise. It protects parents. It also preserves existing child-abuse laws, dependency proceedings, and removal authority for cases involving genuinely unfit parents. Both sides of the equation are addressed.

California's Play

On March 6, California Deputy Solicitor General Julie Veroff filed an emergency motion asking the 9th Circuit to "modify its stay order" and "clarify the terms of the permanent injunction that are now in effect and the terms that remain stayed pending appeal." Veroff claimed this would help California entities "understand their obligations" and "mitigate confusion among public school employees and avoid unintended harm to students."

The motion asked the court to confirm that Benitez's injunction cannot compel disclosure to "parents who would engage in abuse." It also argued the parental notice requirement should remain stayed pending appeal because it "could be understood" to impose a "see something, stay something" obligation on school employees. Veroff further contended that the Supreme Court limited the injunction only to "parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions."

Veroff said, "of course," California respects the Supreme Court's order and is "complying with the terms of the injunction." She also argued Benitez's order was "inconsistent with the reasoning" of the Supreme Court's decision.

Respecting an order while simultaneously asking a lower court to rewrite it is a novel form of compliance.

Judge Benitez Already Offered a Fix

Here's what makes California's 9th Circuit gambit so revealing. Judge Benitez himself offered to modify his order at a March 9 hearing, proposing language that would explicitly confirm the injunction does not block state action against unfit parents. He offered precisely the kind of clarification Veroff's motion claimed to seek.

Bonta's Tuesday response? California "appreciate[s]" the proposed addition but is "not prepared" to withdraw the 9th Circuit emergency motion "at this time."

Thomas More Society special counsel Paul Jonna put it plainly in a press release:

"That tells you everything about what their latest legal maneuver is really about … seeking an end-run around the Supreme Court."

If the real concern were protecting children from abusive parents, Benitez's proposed language would resolve it. The fact that California rejected the offer and continued pressing the 9th Circuit tells you this was never about clarification. It's about narrowing the injunction through a court more sympathetic to Sacramento's preferences.

The Jurisdiction Problem

The plaintiffs' opposition brief makes a clean legal argument: the 9th Circuit simply lacks the authority to do what California is asking.

"Whether styled as a 'clarification' or a 'modification,' the practical effect is to alter a Supreme Court order, which this Court has no authority to do."

California invoked a precedent called Mi Familia Vota to justify the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction. The plaintiffs dismantled it. That case involved a panel modifying its own prior interlocutory order on its own authority, not modifying an order to contradict a ruling of the Supreme Court. The distinction is not subtle.

If California wants relief from the Supreme Court's order, the plaintiffs argue, it must seek Rule 44 relief directly from the Supreme Court. Going to the 9th Circuit instead is forum shopping dressed up as procedural housekeeping.

The Academic Spin

University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black offered Chalkbeat his theory that school districts could plausibly withhold notification from parents unless parents directly ask. He suggested the Supreme Court didn't necessarily require districts "to get on the phone and say, 'Hey, did you know that Jane is going by John now?'" He called that interpretation "kind of absurd" and noted "parents may very well know."

This is the interpretive game. Take a clear Supreme Court order restoring parental rights and parse it into irrelevance. If parents already know, no notification is needed. If they don't know, notification would be absurd. The logic is circular by design: parents have rights, but no mechanism to exercise them.

What's Really at Stake

As of Thursday afternoon, it was not clear whether the 9th Circuit had acted on California's motion. Just the News checked the official court docket system and found it was not returning case summary data. The most recent docket entry visible was from Wednesday morning, when the transcript from the March 9 hearing was filed.

The larger pattern is unmistakable. California has constructed an elaborate legal architecture to keep parents in the dark about consequential decisions being made about their children inside public schools. When the Supreme Court knocked that architecture down, California's response was not to comply in spirit. It was to find a procedural side door.

The state's argument rests on a manufactured tension: that notifying parents inherently endangers children. But the injunction Benitez issued already accounts for this. Existing mandatory reporting laws, dependency proceedings, and removal authority remain fully operative. No one is proposing that abusive parents receive a permission slip. The system already has mechanisms for protecting children from harm.

What California cannot stomach is the principle underneath all of it: that parents, not school administrators, are the primary authorities in their children's lives. That principle survived a century of Supreme Court jurisprudence. It survived the 9th Circuit's attempt to limit it. And it will survive this latest attempt to hollow it out through procedural creativity.

Sacramento lit this fight. The Supreme Court answered. Now California is whispering to the 9th Circuit, hoping no one notices.