Published November 26, 2025
On November 26, 2025, EPPC scholar Eric Kniffin filed an amicus brief in the Tenth Circuit case Wailes v. Jefferson County (CO) Public Schools, which argues that a school district policy that places students in overnight accommodations based on gender identity instead of by sex violates objecting parents’ constitutional rights.
The amicus brief was filed on behalf of Melissa Moschella, a professor in the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life and a fellow in Emory University School of Law’s Center for Law and Religion, building on her scholarship on how American courts have recognized parents’ rights.
The brief reviews United States Supreme Court and state supreme court decisions to argue “that parents possess natural duties and corresponding rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children.” It shows that American courts have long recognized that parents are “free to a great extent to select the course of study” within the public schools, as long as this is compatible with the “proper discipline, efficiency, and well-being of the common schools.”
The amicus brief urges the Tenth Circuit to reverse the district court’s ruling and hold that refusing to honor parents’ convictions that their children should only be rooming with children of the same sex violates parents’ fundamental constitutional rights.
Eric Kniffin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he works on a range of initiatives to protect and strengthen religious liberty as part of EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project.
