Houston Independent School District teachers and administrators allegedly defied multiple directives from the Osborns to refer to their daughter as a girl.

Texas’s largest public school system socially transitioned a teenage girl, even after her parents made multiple demands for administrators to stop referring to their daughter as a male, according to a lawsuit filed this week that is first being reported by National Review.

When their 14-year-old daughter’s theater teacher asked what pronouns the teacher could use to refer to Sarah and Terry Osborn’s daughter, the Osborns were clear — female. Soon after, the Osborns learned that Houston Independent School District employees, the theater teacher included, had directly defied their orders.

School officials used a masculine name and male pronouns to refer to the Osborns’ daughter on schoolwork. So, Sarah reiterated the original message to her daughter’s English teacher and the department chair: District employees were to refer to her daughter only as a girl, with female pronouns and her given name or nickname.

Weeks later, the Osborns found yet another piece of schoolwork that referred to their daughter as a male. Even after a series of back-and-forth communications and meetings with administrators, teachers, and counselors, the Osborns had no confidence that the district was following their instructions. District employees kept referring to the girl as a male without parental consent or notification.

“They were left in a place where they don’t know what’s going on with their daughter in the school day, and the school won’t inform them,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Vincent Wagner, a lawyer representing the Osborn family, told National Review. “That lack of good information about what’s going on with their daughter, which the school has now confirmed is related to its policies, violates the Osborns’ fundamental right to make decisions about their daughter’s upbringing, education, and healthcare.”

“They need that information in order to make the decisions they think are best based on what they know about their daughter and her needs,” Wagner continued. “The Houston school district is interfering with that right.”

Houston ISD did not respond to a request for comment.

Pressure from local and national parental rights groups, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), and lawyers has not been enough so far to convince the district to reconsider its policy that allows students to be referred to by their chosen names and pronouns regardless of parental consent.

ADF’s lawsuit comes after years of “constant anxiety” for the Osborns. All they want is for “the school district to stop getting in the way of them helping their daughter,” Wagner said.

“The school district doesn’t have any business keeping this sort of thing secret from parents,” he added.

Public schools nationwide have come under fire recently from firms like ADF for advancing, allowing, and concealing from parents students’ social transitions.

In 2021, ADF represented Tammy Fournier, a Wisconsin mother whose daughter Autumn, a middle-school student at the time, struggled with gender identity issues. Tammy, wanting her daughter to understand fully the implications of gender transition, sought mental-health care for Autumn. Although Tammy assured the school district that the Fournier family had addressed the situation at home, and asked the school district to refer to Autumn by her birth name and as a girl, the district refused.

A Wisconsin judge ruled in favor of the Fournier family in 2023. Circuit Judge Michael P. Maxwell banned Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine School District employees from “allowing or requiring staff to refer to students using a name or pronouns at odds with the student’s biological sex, while at school, without express parental consent,” as is it “undisputedly a medical and healthcare issue” when children have questions about their gender identity.

“We’ve been involved on behalf of teachers and other school district employees, checking these policies in Indiana, Virginia, Florida, California, and more,” Wagner said. “It’s all over the place, and I’m not sure everyone appreciates how widespread this problem is.”