Schaerr | Jaffe Petitions U.S. Supreme Court to Defend Parental Rights

On January 15, 2026 the U.S. Supreme Court docketed a petition for certiorari from Schaerr Jaffe, with co-counsel America First Legal Foundation, in the case of International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc., v. Ferguson. The case involves a lawsuit against state officials, including the Governor and Attorney General, over laws enacted in 2023 regarding runaway minors who are seeking “gender-affirming treatment.”

State legislators viewed parents who would not affirm a child’s gender confusion as a problem and the challenged laws are designed to give runaway minors “gender-affirming treatment” without parental notice or consent, as well as delay reunification between the parents and the child. As Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke noted, “Washington’s legal regime does not merely invade plaintiffs’ parental rights …, it will obliterate them.”

Schaerr Jaffe represents two children’s rights organizations (International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc., and Advocates Protecting Children), as well as five sets of parents, most with a minor child struggling with gender confusion, at least one of whom has run away before. Yet lower courts found the parents lacked standing to challenge the laws in federal court. The petition notes that several Supreme Court justices have observed that the issue of whether parents have standing to challenge laws and policies that secretly transition their children is “a question of great and growing national importance,” and that the Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s and other circuits’ standing precedent.

As the petition declares in its conclusion, “To paraphrase Hamlet, ‘something is rotten’ in standing doctrine when parents who are the object of a ‘gender-transition’ law have to wait for the (likely) irreparable injury of their child’s actual transition before they can sue. Only this Court can excise the rot.”

The organizations and parents are represented in the Supreme Court by Schaerr | Jaffe partners Gene C. Schaerr and Edward H. Trent, Counsel Hannah Smith, and Academic Affiliate James C. Phillips, and received valuable support throughout the litigation from paralegal Kristina Robinson and in the lower courts from Associate Aaron Gordon.