AFPI Brief Defends Parents’ Role in Children’s Mental Health Decisions
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) Legal Team filed an amicus brief on behalf of Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, who serves as Director of American Values at AFPI. The brief urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a permanent injunction protecting parents from school policies that conceal and facilitate a child’s social transition without parental involvement.
Dr. Bauwens’ amicus brief in Mirabelli, et al. v. Bonta, et al. explains that social transition is a mental health intervention with potential consequences for a child’s identity, well-being and the possible future physical, irreversible treatment. School employees lack the clinical training, the legal authority and a license to practice—all of which are necessary to apply a psychological intervention—and the Constitution protects parents’ primary role in decisions affecting their children’s care and upbringing.
“Schools should not make consequential mental health decisions for a child behind the backs of parents. Social transition can have devastating effects on a child’s mental health–their identity formation, and their ability to sustain healthy relationships. Teachers and administrators have neither the clinical role nor the constitutional and legal authority to chart that course while excluding the people who know and love the child most,” said Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, Director of American Values at AFPI.
Leigh Ann O’Neill, AFPI’s Chief Legal Affairs Officer, added: “This practice violates parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, with potential impacts—and loss of parental control—across many other student-school interactions.”
The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the injunction for the parent class in March while the appeal proceeds. AFPI urges the Ninth Circuit to preserve that protection and affirm that schools cannot push parents out of decisions with lasting consequences for their children.