Let me just say that this case ought to be a wake up call to parents. Pay attention to what is going on at school! You can't possibly know what is happening if you never show your face their except for open house. You have to walk in and get to know the staff. Even then things will go on that you like, but since you are there all the time and they know you, you will be given the opportunity to complain and they won't just put you off as another yapping parent.
About this case in particular, if I had been given a consent form that specifically told me that my child might be "uncomfortable" in answering sone of the questions and that if that occurs the survey sponser "will assist in locating a therapist for further psychological help if necessary", I'd be down at the school asking just what they were up to. Then, if I wasn't satisfied I wouldn't have signed. This letter might not have specifically told the parents that their kids were going to be asked about sex, but they were told enough to ask more questions. They simply weren't paying close enough attention.(parents not paying attention to what's going on in school is a rant for another day)
While I don't necessarily agree with the judge's opinion in this case, I do agree that more specific information was available to any parent who was interested enough to ask questions before they signed the consent form! But once they failed to ask those questions and willingly signed the consent form, they then lost the right to complain about what the survey said.
Look at it this way. When you enroll your child in school(public or private) you give over a lot of your individual choices to that school. You give up the right to choose if you child learns addition first or subtraction. You give up the right to choose whether he has lunch at noon or if his teacher is gay or straight. All these decisions you give over to whoever runs the school.
This ruling agree that every parent had the right to determine in what kind of school their kids will attend. But once that choice is made, they can't go in and pick and choose what their kid will or will not learn.(at least in public school)
The big point here is that these parents signed the form and have no retroactive right to now go back and seek damages because they didn't stop to consider the implications of the entire form.
El Guero, the court didn't say the parents had no rights. It said that by enrolling their kids in public school they handed over those rights to the school. If they had wanted to keep those rights of individual choice then they shouldn't have enrolled the kids in school at the start.
Now as far as the sex questions in the survey go--I wouldn't want my first or third grader exposed to those questions. My fifth grader, I would only be upset over the questions that seem to lead him/her to ideas that aren't generic and ae quite a bit to personal. Specifically the questions about touching other people, thinking about sex all the time and touching oneself to much. These questions perhaps could lead to the behavior described, which probably isn't the intent of the surveyors.
But then again, I wouldn't have signed the form to start with.