SCOTUS Hands Public Employee Relations Board Win Over Rocklin School District Parental Notification Policy

The United States Supreme Court last week refused to consider the Rocklin Unified School District’s challenge to a state labor board ruling that invalidated their policy requiring parental notification about student gender transitions. 

Represented by the Liberty Justice Center, the District had argued that the Public Employees Relations Board exceeded its authority and violated parents’ constitutional rights when it barred the policy at the behest of the local teachers union. 

But the Supreme Court rejected the appeal without comment. 

The end result is that a state agency that is supposed to enforce labor law has been given free reign to allow the teachers union to veto parental rights. 

Liberty Justice Center lawyer Katie Cosgrove told the California Globe that the Board ruling was “a runaround to get at a political issue. The union did not agree that parents should be notified when students are experiencing mental health issues.”

“When we are dealing with the fundamental rights of parents and [an] administrative law [agency] is given the final decision,  we have a deprivation of due process.”

The fracas dates to September 2023 when the Rocklin Unified School District adopted its parental notification policy.  The regulations  required teachers to notify parents within three days if their child asked to be identified by a different gender, use different pronouns or use a bathroom that “did not align with their biological sex.” 

Two days after the policy was adopted, the Rocklin teachers union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board, claiming that the policy violated the collective bargaining rights of teachers.    

 On January 28, 2025, the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) ruled the policy violated state law because it was implemented without the required negotiations with the teachers union. 

 The District appealed the PERB ruling to the California Third District Court of Appeals. 

 But in October 2025, the Court rejected the appeal without offering any reasoning. “The petition for writ of review is denied,” the Court said.  

 The District’s appeal to the California Supreme Court was rejected this January–also with no reason offered.  

 On April 14, the District filed a 25-page petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the  case. 

 “PERB has the authority to resolve labor disputes, not issues of constitutional law. Nonetheless, PERB concluded that the Parental Notification Policy was unlawful,” the brief  stated. “In deciding that the Policy was illegal, PERB not only asserted improper jurisdiction, but also violated the constitutional rights of public-school parents.” 

 “PERB’s findings infringe on the substantive due process rights of parents to raise their children and decide how to handle health care issues, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution. By arrogating to itself the power to prohibit school board policies that protect the constitutional rights of parents, PERB stages an end run around the rights of both parents and the elected officials charged with the responsibility of protecting those rights. “

 PERB did not reply to a request for comment about the Supreme Court ruling.