Just to the west of Philadelphia sits largely middle-class and upper-middle-class Chester County, which still falls within the Philly metropolitan area. People aspire to live there, to buy houses there, and to raise their families there. It’s generally regarded as more affluent, safer, and offering a higher quality of life than living in the city of Philadelphia.
The county had once been reliably red politically, but now it’s considered a blue suburban area. Roughly 41% of the total registered voters in the county are Democrats; approximately 39% are Republicans. Independents make up the other roughly 20%.
It’s not so much the data on registrations as much as how the people, both Democrat and Republican, vote in the county. It’s solidly blue. In presidential elections, Kamala Harris won the county by over 14 points in 2024; Joe Biden carried the county by 17 points over President Donald Trump in 2020. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the county by 9 points.
So, in the spirit of you get what you vote for, parents in Chester County have been kept out of the loop by schools and their staffs on children’s “social transitions.” In other words, if your child is gender-confused and either considering transitioning, or in the midst of transitioning, Chester County Intermediate Unit 24 (CCIU) School District had policies in place to hide that information from you.
According to its website, the CCIU provides special education services to the 12 school districts in Chester County, which “includes services to nearly 86,000 school students and over 6,000 educators.”
More to the point, the district had maintained policy 103.2, which mandated that teachers hide in-school transitioning from students’ parents. It stated that, “Intermediate Unit personnel should not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status or gender nonconforming presentation to others, including the student’s parents/guardians and/or other Intermediate Unit personnel, unless legally required to do so or unless the student has authorized such disclosure.”
Pretty clear, right? CCIU was not finished.
Transgender and gender nonconforming students have the right to discuss and express their gender identity and expression openly and to decide when, with whom, and how much to share such private information.
When contacting the parent/guardian of a transgender or gender nonconforming student, Intermediate Unit personnel should use the student’s legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student’s gender assigned at birth unless the student or parent/guardian has specified otherwise...
When communicating with parents/guardians of transgender or gender nonconforming students, Intermediate Unit employees will refrain from the use of gender pronouns and refer to the student by name whenever practicable.
The Intermediate Unit does not condone the intentional and/or persistent refusal to respect a student’s consistently asserted gender identity, or inappropriate release of information regarding a student’s transgender or gender nonconforming status. Such conduct shall be a violation of this Board policy, the policy stated.
It’s pretty clear that this policy not only prohibited staff from disclosing information on transitioning students, but also embedded in the policy itself was explicit coaching on exactly how to keep parents in the dark.
Usually policies detail the “what” of a situation, but not always the “how.” This policy went there and then some. The policy then very clearly instructed school district staff on implementation:
Based on the policy, the District requires that: a) Staff must affirm a student’s gender dysphoria by always utilizing a student’s preferred name and pronouns, based exclusively on a student’s, not their parents’ request;
b) Staff cannot inform parents that their child has requested a different name and pronouns at school and must affirmatively hide that information if the parents are not already aware of that information; and
c) Any District staff member who does not comply with the policy and practice will face disciplinary action.
Of course, the sorts of things that go unsaid any time a school district enacts a policy like this are how much latitude teachers and staff have on influencing children to question their own sexual identities. They’d prefer to pretend that sort of thing never happens and that these minors come up with the idea to transition all by themselves.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling changed things
In a landmark SCOTUS case in 2026, Mirabelli v. Bonta, both parents and teachers challenged California state policies that required schools to keep information about students’ gender transitioning confidential from parents unless the students consented. These policies were very similar to the one at CCIU in Pennsylvania.
The parents sued over being excluded from any knowledge and decisions regarding their own kids’ gender confusion at school. These policies had been followed in California regardless of the parents’ religious values and beliefs, and the desire on the part of parents to be a part of their children’s mental healthcare.
But it wasn’t just the parents. Teachers joined the lawsuit because they did not want to be compelled to use the students’ new “preferred pronouns” and names at school, especially when they knew that the parents were in the dark and would have objected.
The primary holding of the Supreme Court was that the state of California cannot prevent schools from telling parents about their children’s efforts to engage in gender transitioning at school without the children's consent, or require that schools use children’s preferred names and pronouns regardless of their parents’ wishes. SCOTUS ruled that all of this is unconstitutional.
Two issues were at play. The court decided that the state’s policies were a First Amendment issue. The court ruled that the policies “likely trigger strict scrutiny” because they could interfere with a parents’ right to guide his or her children on their religious upbringing. These school policies were seen as an intrusion on this.
The other issue was one of “substantive due process” under the Fourteenth Amendment, which centers in this case on parental authority over their children’s upbringing. In other words, and this may be an over-simplification, but in a battle between who the children belong to – the state or the parents – the Constitution sides with the parents.
Some good news
In the wake of the SCOTUS decision, the Independence Law Center and the Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to the CCIU on behalf of an unidentified parent or set of parents of a child impacted by this policy. On May 11, Jeremy Samek, a lawyer for the Independence Law Center, sent a letter to CCIU explicitly calling for the district to rescind its policy 103.2 in light of the SCOTUS ruling.
We often joke about sending a “strongly worded letter” as an ineffectual tactic, but in this case, it was more than “strongly worded.” Samek’s letter used case law and the facts to paint the CCIU into a legal corner. He demanded not only that the policy be rescinded, but that the district actively communicate to all teachers that prior guidance on keeping gender identification confidential be disregarded.
And in a thinly veiled threat of possible litigation, he requested the district place a “litigation hold” on email records, documentation, social media accounts, and other data that reference the CCIU’s policy on gender issues.
That led to the CCIU’s decision at a board meeting on Sept. 16 to rescind that policy. PJ Media reached out to the Independence Law Center’s Randall Wenger, the Law Center’s chief counsel. He said that the SCOTUS decision in California paved the way for this district and others to change their policies.
“As a general matter, school districts want their policies to comply with the law,” Wenger said. “In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta and the (president’s) Executive Order on this issue, districts that encourage staff to conceal a child’s social transition from parents face significant legal risk.”
Of course, CCIU was not alone. According to the national nonprofit organization, Defending Education, across the country there are 1,219 school districts that still maintain similar policies. This covers 21,352 schools and a total of 12.3 million students. So, even with the SCOTUS ruling, some schools and school districts still need to be dragged kicking and screaming into constitutional compliance.