The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up a case involving Catholic parents trapped in a custody battle after refusing to recognize their trans-identified son’s self-declared female identity.
In a list of orders published Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the case of M.C., et vir v. Indiana Department of Child Services. The court didn’t provide a reason for rejecting the petition for a writ of certiorari filed by Indiana Catholic parents Mary and Jeremy Cox.
The Coxes appealed to the nation’s high court in December after years of litigation that began shortly after their teenage son informed the devoutly Catholic couple that he identified as a girl and wished to be called by female pronouns.
Because of the couple’s religious beliefs about gender and sexuality, they could not in good conscience comply with their son’s request. The Indiana Department of Child Services initiated an investigation into the Cox household over the parents’ refusal to use their son’s self-declared female name and pronouns.
“No other loving parents should have to endure what we did,” Cox said after the Supreme Court’s announcement. “The pain of having our son taken from our home and kept from our care because of our beliefs will stay with us forever.
We can’t change the past, but we will continue to fight for a future where parents of faith can raise their children without fear of state officials knocking on their doors and taking their children.”
Joshua Hershberger, the general counsel for the Indiana Family Institute, which helped support the couple along with the religious freedom advocacy group Becket, said in a statement that the appeal “accomplish[ed] the goal of placing this fact pattern in front of SCOTUS as a real and growing threat to parental rights, freedom of religion, and free speech.”
“These constitutional principles represent a cause — not just a case — and we will continue to advocate for that cause in law and culture,” Hershberger said.
The petition asked the high court to address the question, asking, “When can the state muzzle parental speech and remove a child from the home of admittedly fit parents?”
It stated that if left unresolved, “evidence regarding siblings’ removal from the home is admissible in a petition to terminate parental rights as to a different child.”
In 2021, two years after their son started identifying as a girl, the Indiana Department of Child Services launched an investigation into the parents that culminated with his removal from their custody and placement into a home that affirmed his self-declared identity.
