A Virginia mother is suing her local school district which she says declined to notify her that her daughter was identifying as a male at school and was being harassed and assaulted by other students.

What’s more, Michele Blair says the Appomattox County Public Schools’ failure to notify her led to her daughter running away from home and being sexually abused around the country.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Blair says her daughter, Sage, had told a school official that she identified as male but did not make her gender identity change known at home — and the school did not do so, either.

Instead, school officials encouraged Sage to use the male restroom, where she was harassed and assaulted, according to the legal filing.

“Notably, Mrs. Blair was notified and had to consent to her daughter receiving a Tylenol at school, yet was never informed about something as consequential as being affirmed as a boy, using the boys’ bathroom and being harassed and sexually assaulted at school,” states the 54-page lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

A spokesperson for Appomattox County Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal case highlights the tensions between the parental rights movement and the LGBTQ movement.

Ms. Blair said the school’s decision to withhold important medical information about her daughter led to a decline in her mental health, to the point that Sage ran away from home. As a result, she was kidnapped, drugged and raped by a number of men from Washington, D.C., to Maryland and eventually to Texas, the lawsuit states.

The mother also alleges that a lawyer in Maryland who was working for the state kept Sage in transgender and group housing, and did not release her to Ms. Blair.

Aneesa Khan, who works for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, is listed as a defendant and declined to comment.

“We fully support our attorney, who appropriately represented her client in accordance with her legal, ethical, and professional obligations,’ Maryland Public Defender Natasha M. Dartigue said in a statement.

Sage was 14 at the time of the rapes. The lawsuit says she will have to undergo lifelong therapy to address her post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Blair family is suing the district for allegedly violating Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, saying it was indifferent about Sage’s claims of sexual assault and harassment at school, and for allegedly violating civil and privacy rights.

“Please do not leave us in the dark,” Ms. Blair said of the school’s interactions with parents. “We love our children. If you see anything going on with a child, you need to notify a parent immediately.”

Vernadette Broyles, a lawyer representing Ms. Blair, said this is just one of roughly 20 cases of parents suing schools for not disclosing matters related to gender identity.

“We are overrun,” said Ms. Broyles, president and general counsel for the Child & Parental Rights Campaign. “[Lawsuits] are being filed all the time.”

She said schools used to work openly with parents to do what’s best for the child, but there’s been a historic shift in which schools have not been transparent with parents.

The Blairs’ case is just one of several pitting parents against schools.

One involves a group of parents from diverse religious backgrounds who have asked the 4th Circuit to allow them to opt their children out of story time when the books involve gender and sexuality issues, like promoting LGBTQ rights.

In August, California’s attorney general sued the Chino Valley Unified School District, which had a policy of notifying parents when their children decide to use pronouns inconsistent with their biological sex.

Around the same time, another California school system — Spreckels Union School District — decided to settle a lawsuit with a family for $100,000 after withholding information about a student’s gender transition and reportedly encouraging the gender change.

Arthur Leonard, a professor at New York Law School and an advocate for gay and lesbian issues, said transgender rights have become a focus in legal battles over the past few decades, specifically since the 1990s, but the involvement of schools has recently occurred within the past 10 years.

“It is not surprising that the transgender issue has emerged dramatically in public schools, starting with litigation by transgender students seeking to be recognized consistent with their gender identity, and of course encompassing employment disputes, library collections, public assemblies and theatricals,” Mr. Leonard said. “The issue is popping up all over.”

He warned that it is not just about parental rights versus transgender rights, saying many parents of transgender minors are also fighting to represent their children in courts so they can use the facilities that match their identity.

“One of the potentially significant results of all this litigation may come in the practice of restroom architecture — a salutary trend towards greater protection for individual privacy by the redesign of facilities,” Mr. Leonard said.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.