CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

Statutes in the State of Washington authorize “gender transition” counseling and other therapies to certain children who have run away from home for the purpose of obtaining “gender transition” services against their parents’ will. A group of parents who are opposed to “gender transition” therapy for their children who are having signs of “gender dysphoria” have sued the State in federal court, seeking an injunction against the operation of those statutes. The parents’ group contends the statutes violate the federal Constitution. The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether federal courts have jurisdiction to decide that lawsuit, either way, sometime during the next term of the Court, which begins in October 2026.[1]

The jurisdiction of federal courts to hear and decide lawsuits of any kind is governed by the “standing-to-sue” doctrine established by Article III of the United States Constitution. In its relevant parts here, Article III provides as follows:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

U.S. Const., Article III, Section 1.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution . . . .

U.S. Const., Article III, Section 2.

The parent group’s lawsuit claims their “Case” sounds in “Equity” (i.e., it seeks an injunction instead of damages) and arises under “this Constitution” because the lawsuit claims Washington’s “gender transition” statutes for runaway children violate the parents’ rights to be parents under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.[2] The State claims that federal courts lack jurisdiction over the lawsuit because it fails to meet the qualifications ordinarily imposed by courts of “equity” for obtaining injunctive relief. Another jurisdictional claim the State might raise before the Supreme Court is the grammatical fact that the Due Process Clause clearly does not prohibit state interference with the “rights” of parents when requisite procedures for state action are followed.[3]

To sustain that second possible defense against federal jurisdiction, the Court would have to take the unlikely step of overruling one of its caselaw precedents. In Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause, in its allegedly “substantive” aspect, did prohibit state legislation that arbitrarily interferes with the “fundamental” right of children’s parents to the “care, custody, and control of their children.” Troxel Case, 530 U.S. at 65.

The Court’s attribution of a so-called “fundamental right” in the United States Constitution, when there is no basis for any such “rights” in the text, the structure, or the history of the Constitution, grossly exceeded the power of the Court to interpret that document, as opposed to amending it. There is no “Substantive Due Process Clause” in the  United States Constitution. The Troxel Case should be overruled. Whatever one may think of the merits or demerits of “gender transition” therapy for children, the plaintiffs’ objections to the laws that permit that kind of therapy do not arise under the United States Constitution. Federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiffs’ claims under Article III.  

/s/ Dan D. Rhea

[1] See International Partners For Ethical Care v. Ferguson, U.S. Supreme Court docket no. 25-840.

[2] “No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .” U.S. Const., Amendment XIV, Section 1.

[3] See footnote 2, supra.