Parental Rights and the Rule of Law

In late June 2025, a federally appointed judge granted an injunction against Alberta’s law prohibiting sex-change procedures for minors. The challenge, launched by trans activist groups, is just the first step in a broader campaign. Activists have made it clear they intend to dismantle Alberta’s entire parental rights framework, including the province’s rules on classroom content and school libraries.

Their allies cheered the decision, but they ignored what was happening across the border.

In the weeks leading up to and following the grant of the injunction, the Supreme Court of the United States issued decisive rulings in two related cases. Both upheld the authority of elected governments to defend the parent-child relationship against activist overreach and bureaucratic freelancing.

Those rulings don’t bind Canadian courts, but they point to a deeper principle, one our courts already recognize.

This fight isn’t really about the harm done to children, real as that is. The legal battle centres on who has the authority to make decisions about children. And Alberta’s recent reforms—starting with its response to the school library controversy—make that principle clear.

The Mahmoud Case

For years, Alberta politicians treated sexually explicit library books like live grenades. Candidates were dismissed for bringing the issue to public attention.

So Parents for Choice did the legwork. We catalogued dozens of graphic titles and handed the evidence to the minister of education. He verified it, ran a consultation (activists spammed it), and issued a Ministerial Order on July 4.

Books with graphic depictions of sex are banned from school libraries. Less explicit material may be available to high school students, but only at the school’s discretion—and parents must be told what’s on the shelves.

The order fixed a process that activists had exploited. Staff had been deciding, in secret, what other people’s children could read. The order restored three obvious rules: parents participate, procedures are fair, and nothing happens in the dark.

Activists shrieked, “Censorship!” Reporters quoted activist librarians as “experts.” Purple hair across the province erupted in flames.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court had dropped the Mahmoud v. Taylor verdict on June 27. It held that schools can’t bury sexually charged material under the “resource” tag. If kids will see it, parents must be told: no euphemisms, no exceptions.

American case or not, the principle is universal: when the state wants to regulate kids and sex, transparency isn’t optional. Whether or not Alberta’s education minister was reading Mahmoud, his order hit the same notes—transparency, parental participation, and due process.

The Skrmetti Case

Children’s trans “medicine” is worse than the sexuality explicit books.

In 2023, Alberta’s pediatric gender clinic informed educators that it would accept referrals without notifying parents. That’s not just unethical—it’s bureaucrats making irreversible decisions about other people’s children, in secret, with no process, no notice, and no accountability.

Then came the Cass Review. Released in early 2024, it confirmed what many already knew: Britain’s pediatric identity clinic was a disaster. The research behind “gender affirming care” was junk. And the clinic knew it. Worse, they ignored basic medical ethics, rushing kids into life-altering treatments without proper assessment or consent.

So, Alberta acted. Bill 26 banned surgeries for minors and imposed age limits on hormones. It was a simple principle: if it’s irreversible, you don’t do it to a child.

That’s the law activists are suing over. That’s the law that a judge paused on June 27, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 18 in Skrmetti v. United States. And the American ruling is that states not only have the right, but possibly the duty, to do exactly what Alberta did.

The province didn’t have the text of the Skrmetti ruling available when it passed the law. But the judge who blocked it did. The activists did. Maybe they didn’t care about the principles that Skrmetti ruled on.

Or maybe they didn’t understand the real question: Who gets to decide—and under what rules?

Before we turn to the last case we’ll cite here, it’s worth noting that Canadian courts already defer to provincial governments on education. In Chamberlain v. Surrey (2002), arguments centred on inclusion in schools—but the Supreme Court emphasized that provinces have the authority to set education policy, and that courts must defer to those decisions.

The Baker Case

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on a case involving an immigration official who ordered a woman deported. She was here illegally, but she was also the mother of Canadian children. And the official never asked what she had to say. He didn’t notify the family. He didn’t explain his reasons.

The Court ruled against the government. Justice L’Heureux-Dubé made it clear: public servants—right down to immigration agents, teachers, and school librarians—are bound by three basic principles. Participation. Fairness. Transparency.

That decision—Baker v. Canada (1999)—is now the cornerstone of administrative law. And it matters here.

Every change the Alberta government has made—from Bill 27 to this year’s Ministerial Order—responds to a basic failure. Parents were left out of life-changing choices for their kids. They weren’t consulted. They weren’t even told that decisions were being made.

Alberta’s changes aren’t shots fired in a culture war. They’re administrative cleanup.

And Baker goes further. Justice Dubé cited Driedger’s rule of interpretation: “The legislature is presumed to respect the values and principles enshrined in international law. … In so far as possible, therefore, interpretations that reflect these values and principles are preferred.”

Our international treaties are not automatically binding in Canadian law, but our courts interpret human rights laws in light of those treaties, since that’s how Canada fulfills its obligations. That’s what the judge in Baker affirmed—and that principle still guides legal interpretation today.

And according to the U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 18(4), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 13(3), those values are clear:

“States Parties … undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents … to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”

That’s not just moral clarity. Under Baker, it helps define lawful process. While someone may argue that Baker is about an official specifically tasked with making immigration decisions, judges have also applied it to school board employment disputes. And administrative law concerns about fairness are raised repeatedly in child welfare cases.

Which brings us back to Mahmoud and Skrmetti. Those weren’t just political wins. They’re persuasive precedents from peer democracies. Baker encourages judges to consult when evaluating due process.

Activists now claim that teachers and clinicians are acting as the state, not on behalf of parents.

Fine. That makes it worse.

If teachers are acting as agents of the state, then Baker applies in full. No secrecy. No freelancing. No exceptions.

Public servants don’t get to play resistance fighter while holding the levers of power. The law is clear, and they are not above it, which means it’s time that parental rights advocates start using the right argument.

What Is the Right Argument?

Stop arguing about harm. That’s not how parents win.

When you go to court claiming a child might be harmed, you’re not asking the judge to apply the law. You’re asking the judge to guess the future.

Judges aren’t experts in child psychology or gender medicine, so they turn to the people who claim to be.

And that’s where parents lose.

The activists pushing secrecy have bottomless resources. They flood the courtroom with expert witnesses. They receive government grants to conduct the studies, write the literature, and pay thousands of dollars per day to doctors and academics who testify in their favour. It doesn’t matter that Britain’s Cass Review dismantled the entire evidence base. Canadian courts still treat it like gospel.

Meanwhile, parents, citizens, and even governments can’t afford to fight that way. And they don’t need to, because there’s a better path.

Administrative law doesn’t ask what might happen; it asks what has happened. It asks what did happen. Was the decision transparent? Was it fair? Were the right people consulted?

Those are objective questions. Judges are trained to answer them. No expert witnesses. No ideological shell games. No literature reviews padded with political theory. Just one question: Did you follow the rules?

That’s how you win.

Until parental rights advocates understand this—until they drop the harm narrative and focus on due process—every case will be lost before it begins.

Conclusion

The attack on Alberta’s parental rights laws isn’t about protecting children. It’s about sidelining their parents.

When government agents—whether teachers, librarians, or clinicians—make decisions about children, the law is not silent.

- They must follow the rules.

- They must notify.

- They must consult.

No secrecy. No freelancing. No exceptions.

If you act in the name of the state, you answer to administrative law. And the law is on the side of parents.

John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca

This article originally appeared in The Epoch Times on July 18th, 2025. A printable pdf is available.