Court Opinion

ID: 9948798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-07 22:00:48.815378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:52.130697
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________
No. 23-1534
PARENTS PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN, UA,
                                                 Plaintiff-Appellant,
                                 v.

EAU CLAIRE AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT, WISCONSIN, et al.,
                                     Defendants-Appellees.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
                   Western District of Wisconsin.
    No. 3:22-cv-00508-slc — Stephen L. Crocker, Magistrate Judge.
                     ____________________

   ARGUED SEPTEMBER 26, 2023 — DECIDED MARCH 7, 2024
                ____________________

   Before WOOD, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
    SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Before us is an appeal brought by
Parents Protecting Our Children, an association of parents
that sued the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin
federal court to enjoin the enforcement of the District’s Ad-
ministrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support. The Ad-
ministrative Guidance, as its name implies, provides direction
and resources to schools encountering students with ques-
tions about their gender identity. Parents Protecting alleged
2                                                  No. 23-1534

that the policy offends the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process
and Free Exercise Clauses by interfering with its members’
exclusive right to make decisions with and on behalf of their
children. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack
of subject matter jurisdiction, explaining that Parents Protect-
ing leveled a broad pre-enforcement facial attack on the Ad-
ministrative Guidance without identifying any instance of the
School District applying the policy in a way concerning or
detrimental to parental rights.
    We affirm. Parents Protecting is clear that their members
harbor genuine concerns about possible applications of the
School District’s policy. Unless that policy operates to impose
an injury or to create an imminent risk of injury, however—a
worry that may never come to pass—the association’s con-
cerns do not establish standing to sue and thus do not create
a Case or Controversy. The district court had no choice but to
dismiss the challenge for lack of Article III subject matter ju-
risdiction.
                               I
                               A
    In 2021 the Eau Claire Area School District promulgated
the Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support.
The Administrative Guidance aims to “foster inclusive and
welcoming environments that are free from discrimination,
harassment, and bullying regardless of sex, sexual orienta-
tion, gender identity or gender expression.” To this end, the
document provides “guidelines” for schools to follow “to ad-
dress the needs of transgender, nonbinary, and/or gender
non-conforming students.” The Administrative Guidance ex-
plains that it is intended to be a “resource” because no amount
No. 23-1534                                                    3

of general direction could “anticipate every possible situation
that may occur” when it comes to matters of gender identity
within a school environment.
    The process envisioned by the Administrative Guidance
recognizes that either students or parents may contact school
officials with questions, concerns, or requests bearing on mat-
ters of student gender identity. By its terms, the Guidance
acknowledges the delicacy and sensitivity of these matters,
including the possibility that some students might “not [be]
‘open’ at home for reasons that may include safety concerns
or lack of acceptance.” For that reason, “[s]chool personnel
should speak with the student first before discussing a stu-
dent’s gender non-conformity or transgender status with the
student’s parent/guardian.”
    In 2022 the School District prepared a template Gender
Support Plan. The Gender Support Plan is a document for
schools to complete in connection with implementing the Ad-
ministrative Guidance for a particular student. It records the
shared understanding between the student and the School
District of a student’s gender identity and parental involve-
ment in the process. The Support Plan explains that “[s]chool
staff, family, and the student should work together to com-
plete th[e] document.”
    Like the Administrative Guidance, the Support Plan rec-
ognizes that circumstances may arise where “parents are not
involved in creating this plan,” in which case the Plan directs
school officials that “it shall be made clear to the student that
this plan is a student record and will be released to parents
when they request it.” This disclosure commitment gives ef-
fect to the School District’s acknowledgment that a support
4                                                   No. 23-1534

plan “is not a privileged document between the student and
the school district.”
                               B
    Parents Protecting Our Children is an unincorporated as-
sociation of parents whose children attend schools within the
Eau Claire Area School District. In September 2022 the associ-
ation brought this lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive
relief on claims alleging that both the Administrative Guid-
ance and Gender Support Plan violate its members’ rights as
parents under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amend-
ment. The complaint also alleged claims under Wisconsin
law.
    To its credit, Parents Protecting is candid on two fronts im-
portant to our resolution of its appeal. The organization
acknowledges that it brought this lawsuit not in response to
an experience any member parent had with the School Dis-
trict’s implementation of the Administrative Guidance, but
instead as a facial pre-enforcement challenge to invalidate the
entirety of the new policy. Parents Protecting is equally clear
that what motivates its lawsuit are sincerely held,
religiously-rooted concerns and uncertainties about how the
School District may implement the Guidance or craft a Gen-
der Support Plan.
   Parents Protecting worries that the Administrative Guid-
ance encourages the School District to leave parents in the
dark if their children wish to explore their gender identity or
begin to socially transition to a different gender at school. The
association also fears that the School District will implement
the Guidance and related support plans in ways that
No. 23-1534                                                     5

effectively displace parental rights by making major life deci-
sions for their children. In these ways, the organization sees
the District’s Administrative Guidance as sowing so much se-
crecy and mistrust between parents and their children as to
offend principles of substantive due process and religious free
exercise.
    The district court concluded that the association failed to
allege any injury or risk of injury sufficient to establish stand-
ing under Article III’s Case or Controversy requirement. Nei-
ther the Administrative Guidance nor the template Support
Plan, the district court determined, mandated the exclusion of
parents or guardians from discussions or decisions regarding
a student’s gender expression at school. From there the dis-
trict court emphasized that the complaint lacked any allega-
tion that any member’s child had questioned their gender
identity or otherwise sought guidance or support under the
School District’s policy, leaving the association unable to
plead any withholding of information from parents. In its fi-
nal analysis, the district court viewed the alleged harm as de-
pendent on a “chain of possibilities” too speculative to estab-
lish Article III standing.
   Parents Protecting now appeals.
                                II
                                A
   Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. No matter
how important a legal question or how sincere a worry, we
must ensure the presence of a Case or Controversy. This re-
quirement anchors itself in principles of separation of powers
and federalism. In limiting the authority of federal courts, the
Constitution empowers other branches and actors (and by
6                                                   No. 23-1534

extension, the people). In some instances, that means Con-
gress and the President (at the national level), and in others,
states and municipalities (at the local level).
    Standing doctrine implements Article III’s Case or Contro-
versy requirement. See Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555,
560–61 (1992). It does so by requiring the party invoking the
jurisdiction of a federal court (most often the plaintiff) to al-
lege that it has suffered “an invasion of a legally protected in-
terest which is … concrete and particularized … and … actual
or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Id. at 560 (in-
ternal citations and quotation marks omitted). The injury
must be traceable to the defendant’s actions and capable of
being redressed through a favorable judicial decision. See id.
at 560–61.
    The law recognizes that an anticipated future injury may
be sufficiently imminent to establish standing. See Clapper v.
Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 409 (2013). But the alleged
future injury must also be concrete: conjecture about specula-
tive or possible harm is inadequate. See id. at 410.
    All agree that Parents Protecting may bring a lawsuit like
this one in an associational capacity and thus on behalf of its
members upon satisfying three requirements. Associational
standing, the Supreme Court has explained, requires factual
allegations showing that (1) at least one of the association’s
members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own
right; (2) the interests sought to be protected by the lawsuit
are germane to the association’s purpose; and (3) neither the
claims asserted nor the relief sought requires the participation
of individual members in the lawsuit. See Hunt v. Washington
State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977).
No. 23-1534                                                  7

                              B

    Parents Protecting never clears the threshold. The associa-
tion invites us to look beyond the language of the Adminis-
trative Guidance to risks that the association envisions and
worries may accompany its implementation. To provide but
a few examples, the association casts its concerns along these
lines:
   •   “[I]f a child wants to keep their gender transition at
       school secret from their parents, the District will hap-
       pily oblige, effectively treating school like Las Vegas—
       what happens at school stays at school.”
   •   “The existence of the Policy alone directly harms those
       relationships by communicating to minor students that
       secrets from their parents— including an entire double
       life at school—are not only acceptable, but will be fa-
       cilitated by the District upon request.”
   •   “[T]he District’s Policy transfers [member’s] decision-
       making authority over whether a gender-identity tran-
       sition is in their child’s best interests from them to
       school staff and/or minor students themselves, and the
       loss of their parental authority over this decision is a
       present injury, because it prevents them from saying
       no to a transition.”
    No doubt Parents Protecting’s allegations punch with con-
viction and concern. But nowhere does the complaint allege
that even one of the association’s members—any particular
parent—has experienced an actual or imminent injury at-
tributable to the Administrative Guidance or a Support Plan.
Nor, for that matter, do we see an indication that any of Par-
ents Protecting’s members asked the School District about
8                                                  No. 23-1534

how it plans to implement the Guidance. All we have before
us is a policy on paper without concrete facts about its imple-
mentation.
    The district court was right to see Parents Protecting’s
pleading shortcoming as analogous to the one that guided the
Supreme Court’s reasoning in Clapper v. Amnesty International
USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013). The Court in Clapper considered a
challenge to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act brought
by lawyers concerned that the federal government’s elec-
tronic-surveillance activities would intercept privileged and
confidential communications with their foreign clients. See id.
at 401. But the lawyers’ complaint contained no allegations
that any such interceptions had occurred or were likely to oc-
cur in the near future. See id. at 411. And it was that precise
gap that led the Court to hold that the plaintiffs lacked stand-
ing, as they failed to allege facts showing that their “threat-
ened injury” was “certainly impending.” Id. at 410. To the
contrary, the alleged harm “relie[d] on a highly attenuated
chain of possibilities.” Id.
    The same deficiency requires us to affirm the dismissal of
Parents Protecting’s complaint. Applying Clapper’s reasoning
here reveals that Parents Protecting’s expressions of worry
and concern do not suffice to show that any parent has expe-
rienced actual injury or faces any imminent harm attributable
to the Administrative Guidance or a Gender Support Plan.
Maybe that day will come for a member parent. Maybe not.
All we can say with certainty today is that Parents Protect-
ing’s allegations fall short of establishing a Case or Contro-
versy.
No. 23-1534                                                    9

                               III
    Everyone reading this opinion will recognize the sensitiv-
ity, delicacy, and difficulty of the subject matter addressed by
the Administrative Guidance. Many will take the next step of
looking forward and asking hard “what-if” questions. To-
day’s decision affords the Eau Claire School District the op-
portunity to devise responses in each individual circumstance
as it arises—informed by balanced, inclusive, and respectful
dialogue. Will those answers always come easy and satisfy
everyone? Hardly. Life often deals challenging, frustrating,
and messy hands. Allowing solutions to be sought—or per-
haps at times impasses to be reached—student by student and
circumstance by circumstance most respects the role and po-
sition of the Eau Claire School District and the interests of all
involved in and affected by implementation of the Adminis-
trative Guidance.
     If resort to the federal courthouse proves necessary in a
particular instance, so be it. But this lawsuit came as the ink
was still drying on Eau Claire’s Administrative Guidance.
Parents Protecting seeks to pull a federal court into a range of
complex and often emotional challenges on matters of gender
identity, where the right policy recipe is not yet clear and the
best answers are sure to come in time—through the experi-
ences of schools, students, and families. On these levels, the
federal judiciary has no input to provide—no policy perspec-
tive to offer and no implementation tips to suggest. Our role
is limited to awaiting concrete disputes between adverse par-
ties, and to resolving those disputes under established rules
of procedure and familiar methods of legal reasoning. But
sweeping pre-enforcement facial invalidation of law is highly
disfavored. See United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745
10                                                 No. 23-1534

(1987). And that is especially so where, as here, the relief
sought implicates a local policy and weighty principles of fed-
eralism. See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 112 (1983).
   This limited role—mandated by Article III’s Case or Con-
troversy requirement—imposes an obligation of restraint (in-
deed, judicial humility) in a circumstance like this. In the ab-
sence of an actual or imminent injury sustained by Parents
Protecting or one of its members, we have no choice but to
stay on the sidelines.
     With these final observations, we AFFIRM.