Under Washington law, a shelter that takes in a minor must ordinarily tell the parents within 72 hours, unless it suspects abuse or neglect. Since 2023, a shelter may instead notify the state when the child is seeking or receiving what the statute calls "gender-affirming" treatment. A group of parents, including a parent whose child had run away before, sued Governor Bob Ferguson, a Democrat. The Ninth Circuit ruled against them, finding they had no standing to bring the case.
That is the only question the Supreme Court will take up for now. It is not asking yet whether the law is right or wrong. It is asking whether a mother or father may even walk into a courtroom and object when a state law shoves them out of the decisions that govern their own child. Lawyers for the parents say the law is aimed squarely at them, and that being told you have no standing to challenge a law written about you is a strange kind of justice.
The case sits beside other matters the justices will weigh this term, among them a Colorado preschool dispute involving Catholic parishes. Together they show how much of today's legal fighting is over one old question: who has the first claim on a child, the family or the state?
Whose child is it?
Set the briefs aside for a moment and think about the father who lies awake because his fifteen-year-old did not come home. He calls the police. He calls friends. He drives the streets. Meanwhile, under this Washington policy, the building where his son or daughter sleeps may be allowed to tell the state something the father is never told. That is not a small procedural matter. It is a door closed in a parent's face at the very hour he needs it open.
I do not doubt that some homes are broken, and that some children run from real danger. Where there is abuse, the law already provides for that, and rightly. But a policy built on the idea that parents are presumed to be the threat has the matter backward. The mother and father are, in the great run of homes, the ones who love that child most and will sacrifice the longest.
Scripture does not leave this to guesswork. God placed children in families before He ever raised up a government. He charged fathers and mothers with their raising, and He did not hand that charge to a shelter, an agency, or a statehouse.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
Notice who is addressed. Not the bureaucrat. The parent. And notice what the promise rests on: a long, patient, daily work that cannot be done by someone who is kept in the dark.
The deeper trouble is not a legal one
A confused child does not need to be hidden from the people who bore him. He needs somebody to tell him the truth in love: that he was made on purpose, that God does not make mistakes, and that his body is not an enemy to be corrected. The Lord Jesus said of the little ones that their angels always behold the face of the Father, and He warned in the strongest words against anyone who would cause one of them to stumble. That warning is not for parents alone. It stands over every institution that handles other people's children.
And my friend, if you are a parent whose child has wandered, hear this. The Father in heaven knows what it is to wait at the gate. The Lord told of a son who left home and wasted everything, and of a father who saw him while he was yet a great way off and ran to meet him. That father never stopped watching the road. You must not either.
Whatever the Court decides about standing, it will not settle the real matter. Laws can open a courtroom door or shut it. Only the gospel can mend a household. The one who made the family still stands ready to forgive the failing father, to hold the grieving mother, and to bring home the child who is lost. He asks only that we come to Him as we are.
Honor the justices, who bear a heavy duty, and pray that they weigh it soberly. But put your deepest trust where it belongs, in the Word that does not change when the courts and the legislatures do.
"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward." (Psalm 127:3)