Amicus Brief: Heaps v. Delaware Valley Regional High School Board of Education

Christian Heaps is the father of a student at Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown, New Jersey. His child expressed to school administrators a desire to undergo social transition, from female to male, in school. District policy mandated that school officials accept a student’s asserted gender identity by using names and pronouns consistent with the student’s wishes, without parental consent or even notification.

Mr. Heaps sued in federal court, alleging that the school’s actions deprived him of his constitutional right to direct his child’s medical care and upbringing. The school district argued that its policy protects transgender students at school and fosters a diverse learning environment. The district court ruled against Mr. Heaps, holding that he was unlikely to succeed on his parental rights claim because school officials “passively recognized” his child’s wishes.

The Manhattan Institute filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Heaps’s appeal to the Third Circuit, updating several we submitted in other similar cases (like this one now pending before the en banc Eleventh Circuit). It presents medical research showing that social transition is not an act that merely “passively recognizes” a child’s wishes, but an active mental-health intervention. Decades of research show that children who are not automatically “affirmed” in their purported gender identity come to terms with their natal sex by adulthood. By contrast, minors who are “affirmed” in their new gender identity are more likely to persist in cross-gender feelings and, in time, seek medical interventions that carry known and anticipated risks. Social transition’s use in schools thus falls squarely within parents’ Fourteenth Amendment right to direct their children’s medical care.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.

John Ketcham is a legal policy fellow and director of Cities at the Manhattan Institute.

Leor Sapir is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Photo: Klaus Vedfelt / DigitalVision