New Jersey's school guidance on trans students protects a young person's right not to be outed without their consent. A conservative law firm is now demanding the state repeal it, citing a narrow, preliminary Supreme Court order. What is actually being debated is not a legal technicality: it is whether a school can be forced to betray a child's trust to parents who may not be safe.

What the guidance actually says

New Jersey's Policy 5756 says that schools should not disclose a student's gender identity without that student's consent. It does not say schools must lie to parents. It does not say parents have no role. It explicitly allows disclosure where health, safety, or a bias incident makes it necessary. It is, in other words, a considered, humane piece of guidance that tries to balance two real things: yes, parents have rights, and yes, so do children.

That is not a radical position. It is what good schools do every day, in every country where anyone has thought carefully about the question.

The legal argument being used, and what it is actually worth

The Liberty Justice Center, a Texas-based law firm, sent a letter to New Jersey's Attorney General citing a Supreme Court order in a California case called Mirabelli v. Bonta as grounds for repealing the policy. Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center, is correct to push back on this. The Supreme Court's order was a preliminary response to an emergency application. There were no oral arguments, no full briefs, no extended opinion. It is, as Kim put it, "a very limited window into this emerging area of law." It is not a settled ruling on the merits. Using it as though it settles the constitutional question is not a legal argument: it is a pressure tactic.

It is also worth noting, as Michael Gottesman of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition does, that California's policy is mandatory while New Jersey's is voluntary guidance that districts can choose to adopt. The legal situation is not analogous. And New Jersey's own Law Against Discrimination already protects people from being forcibly outed. The law here is not a vacuum waiting to be filled by federal pressure. It is an existing framework that already takes these questions seriously.

What outing actually does to a child

I have spent years listening to trans young people and their families, and I want to talk about what happens when a trans child is outed to parents who are not ready, or who are actively hostile. Because this is the part of the debate that the Liberty Justice Center's letter does not mention, and it is the part that matters most to the actual children involved.

A trans young person who has come out at school, who has asked to be called by a different name or pronoun, who has found even a small measure of safety in that space, has taken a significant act of courage. They have made a decision about what they can handle and when. They know their family. They know, better than any law firm in Texas, whether going home that evening as an outed trans child is something they can survive.

When a school is forced to disclose that information without the child's consent, it does not just violate their privacy. It removes the only decision they had. It tells them that the institution meant to protect them decided their safety was less important than a parent's right to know. And for children whose parents respond with rejection, punishment, or worse, the consequences can be severe: family breakdown, being removed from their home, deepening mental health crises. These are not hypothetical harms. They are what happens.

Dillon Reisman of the ACLU of New Jersey is right that the policy has been mischaracterised. It does not ask schools to deceive anyone. It asks schools to think before they act, and to prioritise the child's safety in that thinking. That is not a violation of parental rights. It is basic safeguarding.

Who is this campaign actually for?

The Liberty Justice Center says it is acting in the interests of parents. But look at what it is actually asking for: mandatory disclosure, regardless of the individual child's circumstances, regardless of whether the family is supportive, regardless of the risk. That is not a policy designed around children's welfare. It is a policy designed to make trans identity at school impossible to hold privately, to make the school a place where a young person cannot be themselves without their whole home life being immediately affected.

Timothy Snowball, the firm's senior attorney, describes withholding this information as a violation of "basic morality." I would put it differently. Forcing a school to tell parents something a child has specifically asked them not to share, when the child has good reason to fear the consequences, is a betrayal, and a policy that compels that betrayal is not protecting anyone's rights. It is using the language of rights to cause harm to some of the most vulnerable young people in the country.

New Jersey's Attorney General has not yet responded publicly. I hope they hold firm. The guidance is sound, the legal challenge is weaker than it is being presented, and the children it protects deserve better than to be pawns in a national campaign that does not actually care what happens to them.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.