California to pay $4.5 million to Catholic law firm after losing lawsuit over gender secrecy rules

California will pay $4.5 million to a Catholic legal advocacy firm after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state could not continue to hide student transgender identities from parents.

In March the Supreme Court blocked California’s rules that forbid schools from informing parents if their children believed themselves to be the opposite sex.

The high court had held that parents enjoy “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.” The ruling upheld a similar order issued in December 2025 by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez.

On March 31, the Thomas More Society — which had represented the plaintiffs in the class-action suit against the California rules — announced that Benitez had ordered California to pay $4.52 million in attorneys’ fees to the Catholic legal firm.

In his order, Benitez said he was “well familiar” with the yearslong lawsuit. He said California was guilty of “litigation intransigence” while fighting the lawsuit, such as “wasting scarce judicial resources” and “resisting at all junctures.”

The state has “continue[d] to fight” over the case even after the Supreme Court ruling, Benitez pointed out, including claiming that the Supreme Court-approved injunction is “flawed and needs to be modified.”

The $4.5 million fee was arrived at after applying a “multiplier” of 1.25 to a base fee of around $3.6 million. Multipliers are often applied in certain high-risk or otherwise notable legal disputes.

Peter Breen, litigation head at the Thomas More Society, said the massive award “sends an unmistakable message to state governments and school districts across the country: If you trample the constitutional rights of parents, you will pay for it — literally.”

“California threw everything it had at this case,” Breen said. “It lost at summary judgment, lost at the Supreme Court, and now Californians will foot the bill for their government officials’ refusal to respect the fundamental rights of families.”

In December 2025, Benitez had said the case concerned “a parent’s rights to information … against a public school’s policy of secrecy when it comes to a student’s gender identification.”

Teachers have historically informed parents of “physical injuries or questions about a student’s health and well-being,” the judge pointed out, yet lawmakers in California had enacted policies “prohibiting public school teachers from informing parents” when their child claimed to have an LGBT identity.