The lawyers for the parents of the 11-year-old “genderqueer” student who went by a different name in school, while staff members hid the new name and pronouns from their parents, say they will appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The Western Massachusetts parents of the middle schooler sued Ludlow school officials in U.S. District Court, arguing that the school district’s policies violated their parental rights.
After a federal appeals court recently ruled in favor of the school district, the lawyers for the parents vowed that they will take this case to the nation’s highest court.
“This decision is egregiously wrong and cannot stand,” the Massachusetts Family Institute said in a statement. “We will be petitioning the Supreme Court to take the case and overturn the First Circuit’s decision.”
The case goes back to the 2020-2021 school year when 6th-grade students at Baird Middle School — including the parents’ 11-year-old — worked on a project to create biographic videos about themselves. The school’s librarian assigning the project reportedly urged the students to include their pronouns in the videos.
In the months that followed the project, the 11-year-old’s Google account started receiving “unsolicited LGBTQ-themed video suggestions” on their school-issued computer, according to the parents’ lawsuit.
And after watching these clips, the student who was designated the female sex at birth reportedly began questioning whether they “might be attracted to girls” and whether they “had ‘gender identity’ issues.”
A few months later, the student announced in an email to school officials, “I am genderqueer.” According to the student’s email, that meant the student would “use any pronouns (other than it/its),” and the student also said they wanted to change their name: They asked to go by the name “R***” instead of “B***”.
The student still hadn’t told their parents about these identity changes, so school officials used the student’s given name and she/her pronouns when talking with their parents. But during school, teachers addressed the student by their new name.
The school counselor also told the student that they could choose which bathroom to use — boys’, girls’, or the gender-neutral facilities.
In the Ludlow school district, teachers are instructed to not tell parents about their child’s expressions of gender without that student’s consent.
As a result, the parents sued the school system and officials. A lower federal district court ruled in favor of the school system, and recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling to dismiss.
“The school’s conduct was a clear and egregious violation of the parents’ fundamental rights to raise their child,” said Sam Whiting, of the Massachusetts Family Institute. “But the First Circuit’s decision twisted the facts and stretched the law to hold that the school did nothing wrong.”
“This decision tramples on parents’ rights and, as our colleagues at Child and Parental Rights Campaign have stated, it cannot stand,” he added. “We will be filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case and reverse the First Circuit’s decision.”
The appeals court ruling focused on the school district’s protocol that requires its staff to use a student’s requested name and gender pronouns without notifying the parents, unless the student consents.
The parents claimed that the school district’s practice of accommodating and concealing their child’s requested name and pronouns while at school “interferes with their parental rights as guaranteed by the United States Constitution,” according to the ruling.
Meanwhile, the school system countered that its protocol is “appropriate and necessary to ensure a safe and inclusive school learning environment for students.”
The case raises questions about the scope of parental rights protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
The parents argued that the school district’s conduct restricted their parental right to control the upbringing, custody, education, and medical treatment of their child.
“But when all is said and done, we, like the district court, conclude that the Parents have failed to state a plausible claim that Ludlow’s implementation of the Protocol as applied to their family violated their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their child,” the appeals court wrote.
“… parental rights are not unlimited,” the justices added. “Parents may not invoke the Due Process Clause to create a preferred educational experience for their child in public school. As per our understanding of Supreme Court precedent, our pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children.”