Parental Rights Over Transgender Youth: Furthering a Pressing and Substantial Objective?

Abstract

Parental rights are increasingly being invoked to oppose the growing inclusion of trans youth in education. Recently, some provinces have proposed or adopted laws and policies predicated on the belief that parents have a right to be informed of their child’s choice of name and pronouns at schools and that trans youth should not be allowed to change the names and pronouns they use at school without parental consent, which I term “blanket veto and disclosure laws.” In this article, I explore whether blanket veto and disclosure laws can be justified under two dominant conceptions of parental rights — parental authority and parental entitlement. Using the framework provided by section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I argue that blanket disclosure and veto laws cannot be justified under either conception of parental rights. Conceived as protection of parental authority, blanket veto and disclosure laws are unjustified because they are not rationally or narrowly tailored to their objective. Conceived as protection of parental entitlement, the laws are unjustified because their objective is inconsistent with the values of a free and democratic society. Regardless of the conception of parental rights we adopt, blanket veto and disclosure laws are constitutionally and politically deficient.