Indiana Parents Ask SCOTUS to Weigh In on State Taking Custody of Sex-Confused Teen

The state of Indiana took a teenage boy from his Catholic parents after he started identifying as a girl.

Now his parents, Jeremy and Mary Cox, have asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on their child custody case, arguing that the Indiana Department of Child Services violated their parental rights and religious liberty when the agency investigated them for refusing to use their son’s “preferred pronouns” and ultimately kept him from their home while he struggled with an eating disorder.

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“If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere. Tearing a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs, which are shared by millions of Americans, is an outrage to the law, parental rights, and basic human decency,” said Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “If the Supreme Court doesn’t take this case, how many times will this happen to other families?” 

The Cox’s son told them of his female identity in 2019, but because of their religious belief that God created human beings with immutable sex, they would not use his “preferred pronouns,” their attorneys said in a press release. The parents also believe he needed help with underlying mental health concerns, including an eating disorder.

“To address both issues, they provided therapeutic care for their child’s gender dysphoria and scheduled appointments with a specialist to help him with the eating disorder,” attorneys said.

However, the state began investigating the parents in 2021 after a report that they were refusing to use their son’s preferred pronouns or acknowledge him as a girl. The state then removed him from the parents’ home and placed him in a home that affirmed his transgender identity. 

“At the initial trial court hearing, Indiana officials argued the child ‘should be in a home where she is [ac]cepted for who she is.’ The court restricted the Coxes’ visitation time to a few hours once a week and barred them from speaking to their child about their religious views on human sexuality and gender identity,” according to The Becket Fund. 

Ultimately, the state ended up abandoning its accusations of abuse but ended up arguing that the parent’s unwillingness to accept his female identity was contributing to his eating disorder. The trial court ended up allowing the state to keep custody of the teen and kept the gag order in place. 

“In short, even though the court agreed that the Coxes were fit parents, it upheld the removal of their child. An appeals court upheld the removal,” attorneys said. 

Attorneys for the Coxes told the Supreme Court in its reply brief that the case is of “nationwide importance,” and that the state’s “tack — blame a comorbidity and dodge adjudication of parental fitness — provides a playbook that any state can use to eviscerate bedrock constitutional protections while guaranteeing they remain insulated from review.”

“With increasing frequency, governments run roughshod over parents’ religious beliefs on gender identity, including removing children from parents, favoring certain beliefs in divorce custody disputes, and preventing adoptions,” the brief reads. “These cases are sure to proliferate. Some state legislatures are now authorizing the state to take custody where parents refuse full-steam-ahead gender transitions.  And by one estimate, ten million students nationwide attend schools that will actively conceal a child’s gender identity from his parents.”

“This case presents a legal question of nationwide importance: when can the state muzzle parental speech and remove a child from the home of admittedly fit parents? The [lower court decision] squarely conflicts with this Court’s precedents on parental rights, free speech, and religious exercise,” the brief continues. 

Attorneys for the Coxes first filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court in September of 2023. Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita, representing the state’s Department of Child Services, filed a brief in opposition in January. 

The state is arguing that the case is moot because the Cox’s son is an adult now.

“But if Indiana is right, all child welfare cases will become unreviewable when the child turns 18. That is textbook capable-of-repetition-yet-evading-review,” the parents’ attorneys wrote.

The attorney general’s office is also arguing that teen was removed because of his eating disorder. 

“Rather, petitioners’ child was removed because the child had a severe eating disorder that petitioners had not been able to effectively address for two years, that jeopardized the child’s brain and bone health,” the attorney general’s office stated. 

The brief additionally argues that the teen’s eating disorder was caused in part by “self-isolation” from his parents that was “likely to reoccur” if he was returned home. 

“This is what every parent is afraid of. We love our son and wanted to care for him, but the state of Indiana robbed us of that opportunity by taking him from our home and banning us from speaking to him about gender,” said Mary and Jeremy Cox. “We are hopeful that the Justices will take our case and protect other parents from having to endure the nightmare we did.”  

The case is M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services, No. 23-450 in the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.