Parental Notification and Opt-Out Policies Keep Children Safe

A letter comes home in your child’s backpack. Next month, their health class will cover a sensitive topic—something you’d rather introduce on your own terms, in your own time, in a way that fits your family’s values. Thankfully, the letter doesn’t just inform you. It gives you a choice: Sign here to opt your child out of the lesson, no questions asked.

You sign. Your child spends that class period on an alternate lesson or activity. Everything worked as it should, with you directing your child’s education. That’s the quiet, unremarkable outcome of parental rights working as intended. You were notified, you were given a real choice, and your decision-making authority over your own child was respected.

These instincts to notify or seek permission from parents aren’t accidental. It reflects a historical understanding that parents have the primary role in guiding their children’s upbringing and education. Schools routinely require permission slips for field trips, signatures for report cards, and consent to administer over-the-counter medication.

Such policies exist because schools have historically recognized a simple, foundational truth: Parents are not bystanders in their children’s lives. Parents are the primary decision-makers, entrusted with both the God-given authority and responsibility to act in their child’s best interest.

And yet, in a growing number of situations, parental notification and opt-out rights seem to be vanishing. For example, across the country, schools have faced scrutiny for encouraging or even facilitating the secret social transitions of students, referring to children by new names and biologically inaccurate pronouns—all while deliberately withholding that information from their parents. Some schools also teach children controversial or ideologically-driven material without sufficient notice to parents or a meaningful opportunity to opt their children out.

This is clearly wrong. Parents are the primary caretakers of their children, not the government, and they must be involved in critical decisions regarding their children’s education, health, and well-being. Parents’ rights are fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.

Parents are being excluded from important decisions

Notifying parents and giving them a real say are not just common courtesies. They are duties that school officials owe to parents. When parents drop their child off at school each morning, they expect their decision-making authority over their children’s education and upbringing to be honored and respected.

Yet time and again, schools are treating parents more like optional participants in key educational and mental health matters than as essential decision-makers in their children’s lives. That is unacceptable—and it violates parents’ fundamental rights.

Secret social transitions

Perhaps nothing has drawn more attention to the importance of parental notification rights than the incorporation of gender ideology into public education. Schools across the country are denying reality and teaching kids that they can be born in the wrong body. They are socially transitioning children to new “gender identities” with different names and wrong-sex pronouns, and deliberately concealing this critical information from parents. And they are teaching controversial curriculum on sensitive topics like sexuality and gender—without sufficient parental notification or opportunity to opt out.

Parents are being kept in the dark and shut out of consequential decisions about their child’s upbringing, education, and health. And it’s children who are being harmed.

• Dan and Jennifer Mead’s daughter had been struggling when a Michigan school district decided—without parental notification or consent—to socially transition her after she expressed confusion about her gender. The school began to refer to their daughter with male pronouns and a masculine name. Not only did they not tell Dan and Jennifer, but they actively tried to conceal this critical information from them by altering a school record being sent home in an attempt to hide the wrong name and pronouns being used at school. When the Meads accidentally discovered the deception and directed the school to stop, it refused. ADF filed a lawsuit on the parents’ behalf in December 2023.
• Jennifer Vitsaxaki’s daughter began to struggle with her identity and shared this with her New York school. But instead of telling Jennifer, school officials actively lied to her, even after she specifically asked about bullying because she noticed her daughter was acting anxious at home. Without Jennifer’s knowledge or consent, school officials began meeting with her daughter to discuss socially transitioning her to a new “gender identity,” calling her daughter by “they/them” pronouns and a masculine name at school—but, with Jennifer, using her daughter’s given name and feminine pronouns. Jennifer was eventually forced to pull her daughter out of that school. ADF filed a federal lawsuit on Jennifer’s behalf in 2024.

Thankfully, a major legal breakthrough was recently made on secret social transitions. In March 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a key per curiam decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta. There, parents challenged a California policy that requires schools to hide a child’s social transition from their parents, unless the child consents. The Supreme Court recognized that parents’ fundamental rights include “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health” and that the state’s policy was an “intrusion” on parents’ free-exercise rights.

The Supreme Court sent a strong signal in Mirabelli that secret social transition policies are “likely” unconstitutional, so states, schools, and the lower courts should be motivated to respect parents’ right to know how their child is being treated at school and to be involved in important decisions regarding their mental health.

Though the Meads’ and Jennifer Vitsaxaki’s cases are still being litigated, Mirabelli has already had a positive impact on them.

School-sponsored activities

When a school prepares to take your child on a field trip, they have to get parents to sign a permission slip. That seemingly innocuous process is vital in keeping parents informed. Yes, your child likely won’t be in any particular danger while going to a museum, but that’s still a minimal risk that parents must sign off on. So what happens when parents are left in the dark about more important matters, like who your child shares a hotel room with on an overnight field trip?

Just ask Joe and Serena Wailes. These Colorado parents had to learn from their 11-year-old daughter that she was assigned to sleep in the same hotel room—and was supposed to share a bed—with a boy on an overnight school-sponsored trip to the East Coast. School policy assigned students to sleeping arrangements based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex. ADF filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Waileses and two other families in September 2024, and a fourth family later joined the suit that December. The case is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

School curriculum

Just as important as whether a child is treated consistent with their sex, is when and how a young child learns about sensitive topics like gender and sexuality. Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught and to opt their children out of controversial curriculum that conflicts with their faith or values. Unfortunately, parents’ right to notice and opt out aren’t always respected.

In Maryland, the Montgomery County Board of Education incorporated “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks into the curriculum for students as young as five years old. A diverse coalition of parents was understandably concerned about this and, when they approached the school board, they were initially informed that they would have the opportunity to opt out of such material.

That opt-out offer was rescinded by the school district less than a year later based on claims that there had been too many requests and accommodating them all would cause “significant disruptions” to the classroom. True or not, “significant disruptions” do not justify violating the free-exercise rights of parents.

The Supreme Court agreed. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which ADF filed a friend-of-the-court brief, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents, finding that “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs, substantially interferes with the religious development of their children…” While the Mahmoud decision made clear that public schools cannot violate parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious upbringing, a situation in Colorado demonstrates how settling the law and fixing the practice are two very different things.

Opt-out policies

Even where a school district offers parents an opt-out on paper, that right means little if parents never learn it exists in time to use it, or if their timely opt-out requests are not honored. That’s the problem now playing out in Roaring Fork Schools, a district serving families in Colorado.

In May 2023, Roaring Fork adopted the 3Rs curriculum, a free sex-education program created by the national group Advocates for Youth. The district’s board of education dismissed parent objections (shared when the curriculum was being considered) as “sensational comments,” but promised families “a clear opt-out system” would be put in place.

That promise hasn’t been fulfilled. Roaring Fork requires only two weeks’ notice to parents before a lesson, and that notice has been given inconsistently—sometimes in take-home folders, sometimes through e-newsletters or an app alert, and sometimes not at all. And while some parents did get notice and submit opt-out forms, their requests were not honored. Indeed, one parent’s child wasn’t pulled from a lesson until it was already half over.

In August 2026, Alliance Defending Freedom sent Roaring Fork Schools Board of Education a letter asking the district to remove the 3Rs curriculum entirely or, at a minimum, switch to a genuine opt-in system with clear, advance notice before the 2026–27 school year begins. Roaring Fork is a live test of the same principle Mahmoud already settled: Parents have a constitutional right to know what their children are taught about sex and gender and to opt them out when it conflicts with their beliefs.

The harms caused by ignoring parental notification and opt-out policies

When schools sideline and exclude parents from important decisions about their children’s upbringing and education, trust is broken. The relationship between parents and educators has always depended on a shared understanding: Parents entrust their children to schools with the expectation of transparency, and schools partner with parents in the education of their children, recognizing parents as the primary decision-makers for their children.

Educators play an important role in children’s lives. But it’s parents, not the government, who have the right and responsibility to raise and educate their children.

Parents are the ones to decide when and how their children learn about sensitive topics like sex and gender. When children (of all ages) are exposed to inappropriate and unsuitable material, there are clear negative effects. Parents know and love their children best, and it’s parents who provide the wisdom, stability, and consistency young people need to navigate complex issues like identity or faith.

When schools willfully contradict the express instructions or religious beliefs of parents—especially concerning deeply personal matters like gender, sexuality, and identity—they risk confusing children and driving a wedge between kids and their parents when they need them most.

Parents are the primary decision-makers in their children’s lives

At its core, the concern over parental notification and opt-outs is about who has the ultimate decision-making authority and responsibility for raising and educating children. Schools educate. Parents parent.

Parents are not bystanders. They are the ones who bear the long-term responsibility for their child’s education, development, and well-being. And for over 100 years, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that parents have a fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and healthcare without unreasonable government interference.

This isn’t simply a philosophical argument; it’s a practical one. Parents know their children in ways no government institution ever can. They understand their child’s history, temperament, struggles, and needs with a depth that simply cannot be replicated in a classroom setting.

In the end, the principle is as straightforward as it is essential: There is no substitute for the relationship between parent and child. And parents have ultimate decision-making authority when it comes to important decisions about their children’s education, upbringing, and health. They know and love their children best, and they alone carry the responsibility for nurturing their children into adulthood.

Upholding strong parental notification and opt-out policies isn’t just good practice. It’s a necessary step in protecting children, preserving parental rights, and ensuring that families—not the government—remain at the center of a child’s life.