Pali Institute Lawsuit and the Anti-SLAPP Ruling

The Pali Institute lawsuit, filed by Orange County families whose fifth-grade daughters attended a 2022 school science camp, ended in a split ruling in August 2025: a California appeals court dismissed the emotional distress claims tied to the camp’s gender identity discussions under the state’s anti-SLAPP statute, but allowed several other claims to move forward toward trial.

What the Families Alleged

The plaintiffs, represented by the Long Beach-based Lex Rex Institute, sued the Pali Institute for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress after a four-day overnight trip in late January 2022.¹ The trip was arranged through the Los Alamitos Unified School District, which sent roughly 600 fifth-graders to the camp’s San Bernardino mountain campus.²

According to the complaint, counselors introduced themselves using “they/them” pronouns, asked the 10- and 11-year-old students to share their preferred pronouns, threatened discipline for using the wrong pronouns, and discussed transgender identification and sexual identity. Students who asked to phone their parents were refused under a camp policy prohibiting calls home. The families described the trip as a “bait-and-switch,” arguing that parents were never told “sexual matters or LGBTQ issues would be taught at Pali” and never consented.³ They also raised concerns about cabin assignments, alleging that counselors who used “they/them” pronouns supervised dormitories where the girls slept.⁴

Pali Institute founder Andy Wexler denied that any girls had been housed with biological males.⁵ On Fox News, plaintiff Rachel Sandoval acknowledged: “Just to clarify, we have not actually confirmed that there was a biological male in the cabin.”⁴

The Anti-SLAPP Motion and the Trial Court

Pali Institute, represented by the appellate firm Horvitz & Levy and the Olson Law Group, moved to strike the emotional distress claims under California’s anti-SLAPP statute. That law lets defendants seek early dismissal of lawsuits targeting protected speech on matters of public concern.¹

The trial court denied the motion. It reasoned that the families’ claims were really about the camp’s failure to notify parents in advance and its no-call-home policy, not about the pronoun discussions themselves.⁶ Pali appealed.

The Appeals Court Ruling

On August 13, 2025, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division Three, issued a published opinion in Sandoval v. Pali Institute, Inc., Case No. G063037, reversing the trial court in part.⁷ The panel of Justices Thomas Delaney, Joanne Motoike, and Maurice Sanchez sorted the case into two categories.³

Claims Dismissed

The court held that the claims arising from the gender identity discussions and pronoun usage fell within the anti-SLAPP statute because they targeted speech on a matter of public concern. Moving to the statute’s second step, the court found the families had not shown their claims had even minimal legal merit.

Two problems drove that conclusion. The main supporting evidence was a declaration from a student’s mother that the court deemed largely inadmissible hearsay.⁸ And even taking the allegations at face value, the court held that exposing fifth-graders to gender identity discussions in a school-related setting did not rise to the “outrageous conduct” threshold for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and did not constitute a breach of duty for negligent infliction of emotional distress.³

The court grounded its analysis in California public policy, writing that construing gender identity discussions aimed at creating “a more inclusive school environment” as outrageous conduct or a breach of duty “would run directly counter to that established state policy.”⁹

Claims Allowed to Proceed

Several allegations had nothing to do with gender identity speech and fell outside the anti-SLAPP statute. Those claims survive and return to the trial court:

The camp’s no-call-home policy that prevented students from phoning their parents.
How dormitory cabin assignments were handled.
Alleged failure to disclose relevant information about counselors.
Allegations of harassment directed at a student, as described in the mother’s declaration.

The appellate court expressly declined to weigh in on whether those remaining claims are legally viable, saying they “are matters not before us and properly left for another day.”³

Justice Delaney’s Concurrence

Justice Delaney joined the majority and added a separate opinion focused on a single point: imposing emotional distress liability for gender identity discussions in schools would put legal force behind private bias. Such liability, he wrote, “would cast a dark shadow over a matter through which people seek to express their subjective, deep-core sense of self” and “would convey a message of intolerance of those perceived as different.”¹⁰ Citing Palmore v. Sidoti (1984) and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), he argued that courts cannot give legal effect to private biases: “As history teaches us, even though such biases may nevertheless persist in society, the law simply cannot give effect to them.”³

Criticism of the Court’s Reasoning

First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, writing at the Reason legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, agreed with the outcome but criticized the reasoning. By anchoring its decision in whether the camp’s conduct aligned with California’s state policy of inclusivity, Volokh argued, the court effectively treated the emotional distress torts as viewpoint-based restrictions on speech: speech the state endorses is protected, while disfavored speech could still be punished as “outrageous.”³

Volokh argued the court should have relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), which holds that the First Amendment protects opinions on matters of public concern regardless of whether the speech strikes some listeners as outrageous, and that the same viewpoint-neutral principle should apply to speech directed at children.³

Where the Case Stands

The dismissed emotional distress claims tied to the pronoun and gender identity discussions are gone. The surviving claims, involving the no-call-home policy, sleeping arrangements, nondisclosure about counselors, and harassment of a student, return to the trial court. There is no public record as of late 2025 that those remaining claims have been tried or settled.

A separate federal matter should not be confused with the Pali Institute lawsuit. On March 4, 2025, the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies and the California Justice Center filed a Title IX civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the California Department of Education and several school districts, including Capistrano Unified, which was cited for its continued use of Pali Institute for overnight trips.¹¹ That is an administrative complaint against school districts, not part of the Sandoval lawsuit, and no public resolution has been reported.¹²

1
Legal Newsline. Court Blocks Families’ Suit Over Forced Gender Talks at Kids’ Science Camp
2
Event News Enterprise. How an Annual Elementary School Trip Became Ensnared in Controversy
3
Reason. No Emotional Distress Liability for Science Camp Exposing Fifth Graders to Gender Identity Related Discussions
4
Orange County Register. A Local TV News Story Sparks Frustration, Fear in Transgender Community
5
Fox News. Los Alamitos Camp Nonbinary Counselors
6
FindLaw. Sandoval v. Pali Institute, Inc.
7
California Courts. Sandoval v. Pali Institute
8
LCW Legal. Court Holds Gender Identity Discussions at a School Sponsored Camp Setting Are Protected Activity Under Anti-SLAPP Statute
9
Horvitz & Levy. Sandoval v. Pali Institute (2025)
10
Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Sandoval v. Pali Institute Concurrence
11
Defense of Freedom Institute. Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against California Department of Education and Multiple School Districts for Title IX Violations
12
California Policy Center. Civil Rights Complaint