OCPA is perhaps best known for its policy work, journalism, public forums, and leadership training. But it’s important to point out that our work also includes legal research and courtroom advocacy.

For example, you may recall that parental-rights activist January Littlejohn [pictured above at left, in blue dress] was a guest of First Lady Melania Trump last month at President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress. January and Jeffrey Littlejohn sued their 13-year-old daughter’s school district for facilitating her “gender transition” without parental consent. The U.S. District Court dismissed the case, and a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. 

In an amici curiae brief filed last week, OCPA’s Ryan Haynie and Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute requested en banc review by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Amici believe it is important to respect the basic rights of parents to direct their children’s healthcare by prohibiting schools from socially transitioning children without parental notification and consent,” they wrote. After all,

Parental rights are among the oldest and best-established substantive protections provided under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. That parents have the right to control the healthcare decisions of their children is “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

This is not the first time OCPA has filed a friend-of-the-court brief. You may recall that in 2023, OCPA filed a brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma in support of Oklahoma’s law that prevents children from being subjected to sex-change surgeries or given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. And in 2024, we filed a brief in the Oklahoma Supreme Court in support of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.