Jewish advocacy group urges SCOTUS to hear challenge to Washington law allowing trans runaways to be hidden from families

In an amicus brief, the organization argues that Washington’s framework burdens parents whose faith requires them to guide their children’s moral and religious upbringing. Its filing warns that the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning could prevent religious families from challenging government interference until the damage has already occurred.

The brief supports the parents in International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court agreed in June to review whether the parents have standing to challenge Washington’s laws, with oral arguments scheduled for December 7. The immediate question is whether the lawsuit can proceed. A coalition of 16 states urged the Supreme Court earlier this year to hear the case, arguing that Washington's system undermines parents' constitutional rights to direct the upbringing and medical care of their children.

Before Washington Democrats passed SB 5599 in 2023, shelters had to notify parents within 72 hours, preferably within 24, when they received a runaway minor and provide the child's whereabouts and condition. An exception existed when notifying a parent could subject the minor to abuse or neglect. The legislation expanded the state's definition of a "compelling reason" not to notify parents to include circumstances in which a minor is seeking or receiving "protected health care services," which under Washington law include transgender-related treatment and abortions, even when there has been no allegation of parental abuse or neglect. In those cases, the shelter notifies the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) rather than the parents.

According to the parents’ filing, the framework allows parents to be kept in the dark about their child’s whereabouts, condition, and pursuit of transgender-related treatment and abortions.

NJAC’s argument focuses on chinuch, the Jewish obligation to educate and guide children. Drawing on scripture, the Talmud, Maimonides, and other Jewish legal authorities, the organization describes that responsibility as continuous and personal to the parent.

According to the brief, that obligation is exercised through everyday conversations, educational decisions, and guidance when children confront difficult questions. NJAC argues that parents suffer a present religious injury when a state-created risk causes them to restrain those conversations out of fear that their children could leave home and enter a system that excludes them.

The Ninth Circuit treated changes in the parents’ behavior as self-imposed responses to speculative future harm. NJAC challenges that reasoning, arguing that a religious parent’s obligation to teach cannot be treated as an optional preference.

The organization contends that the government can burden parental religious exercise through shelters, schools, clinics, or other intermediaries even when a statute does not directly order parents to change their conduct. Under the lower court’s approach, it argues that indirect structure could leave families unable to challenge interference before it is complete.

The filing also draws on Jewish experiences with government involvement in children’s religious formation. It discusses disputes over New York’s regulation of yeshiva education and a New York City consent-and-disclosure requirement involving a ritual circumcision practice.

As a historical illustration, the brief recounts the 1858 removal of six-year-old Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish family by authorities in the Papal States after a servant reported secretly baptizing him. NJAC uses the example to explain why government interference in the transmission of faith between parents and children carries particular significance for Jewish families, and why access to courts before an injury is complete matters.

NJAC urges the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit, arguing that religious families need a meaningful opportunity to challenge state interference while courts can still prevent the alleged harm. CEO Mark Goldfeder told The Post Millennial, "Washington told a federal court that parents have no injury until the damage to their child is finished. That gets Article III backwards. The injury happens the moment the State decides to stand between a parent and their child. For a religious parent, raising a child is not adjacent to the free exercise of religion. It is the free exercise of religion. And it is continuous, personal, and non-delegable. It cannot be handed to a shelter, a school, or a state agency, and a parent who is cut out of that process has been injured today, not someday. The Ninth Circuit told those parents to come back later. We are asking the Supreme Court to tell them the door is open now."