Advancing American Freedom led a coalition of 30 other amici urging the Supreme Court to take up International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, a case challenging a Washington law that directs state-licensed shelters to contact the Department of Children, Youth and Family Services (DCYF), not the parents, when a runaway child shows up at a shelter seeking “gender-affirming treatment.”
Washington law directs state-licensed shelters to contact DCYF rather than parents if they take in a runaway child who is seeking “gender-affirming treatment.” Washington’s law directs the Department to make a “good faith” effort to contact the parents of runaway children, but the law does not require the effort to be successful before the Department performs its other legal obligation: referring the child to “appropriate behavioral services.”
This law incentivizes vulnerable children to run away from home and undermines parental rights by preventing them from being the final decision-makers about important and potentially irreversible medical interventions. In doing so, it flouts the right of parents to raise their children according to their own values—a right recognized repeatedly over the last century by the Supreme Court.
“Parents should be able to raise their children without having to worry that the government will expose them to gender ideology. Washington’s law incentivizes children to run away from home to facilitate that indoctrination,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “The Supreme Court must take up this issue before more families are harmed by gender ideology.”