Maryland’s largest school district is free to conceal a child’s gender status from parents, after a federal court denied an appeal that challenged the district’s gender guidelines this week. U.S. Fourth Circuit judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. told parents “that opposition to the guidelines should be settled with elected representatives, not in court”:
The parents have not alleged that their children have gender support plans, are transgender or are even struggling with issues of gender identity. As a result, they have not alleged facts that the Montgomery County public schools have any information about their children that is currently being withheld or that there is a substantial risk information will be withheld in the future. Thus, under the Constitution, they have not alleged the type of injury required to show standing.
None of the parents who challenged Montgomery County Public Schools have transgender children, but their lawyer said Monday, “Parents do not have to wait until they find out that damage has been done in secret before they may complain.” Although plaintiffs can appeal the case to the Supreme Court, if Montgomery County’s current school board is the recourse to stop schools from concealing gender transitions, there’s little hope for parents.
The same board of education that we’re expected to believe values parental rights just promoted a principal who has 18 reports of sexual assault and bullying against him, refuses families the right to opt out of vulgar and pornographic instruction, likens Muslim parents to white supremacists for questioning LGBTQ curriculum, allows a student to vote on the district’s $3 billion budget (one of the only districts in the country to do so), and graduates kids who aren’t proficient in math. The district defunded school police a couple of years ago to advance racial equity and threw millions of dollars into restorative justice programs — weeks after that decision, a student was shot in a school bathroom, an area which police usually patrolled. Board lawyers also admitted the district’s explicit goal of indoctrinating children into gender-identity madness last week.
It’s not dramatic to say that the Montgomery County school board members’ hasty, social-justice-oriented decisions irreparably harm children. Shootings and stabbings rose after the district defunded police, and children who undergo gender transition as a result of social contagion, and without parental consent, face health challenges that can leave them suicidal, infertile, or mutilated.
Board members have proven that progressive hegemony is more important than children’s lives and parent’s rights. The board’s one admirable (though certainly not redeeming) quality is its relentlessness.
Locals have challenged board members on their decisions and hope for better candidates in the county’s 2024 elections. But this takes time that kids don’t have. At least 350 Montgomery County students had gender-support plans as of 2022, and hypothetically, all 350 could and might already use their chosen names, pronouns, bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams regardless of parental consent. The district had a 582 percent increase in the number of students who identify as gender-nonconforming in only two years.
Montgomery County needs stronger legal challenges and better board members, fast.