Parents’ efforts to assert their fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their minor children in the face of public schools’ relentless efforts to lure and indoctrinate vulnerable children into gender confusion are at a critical juncture.  In multiple state and federal lawsuits, parents are making compelling constitutional and factual arguments against ludicrous claims by progressive school districts and states that the schools must protect the fabricated “right” of minors to change their sex by withholding parental notification.

At the same time, the aggressive and sometimes violent demonstrations following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israelis have awakened many previously oblivious Americans to the realization that the progressive agenda is unmoored and dangerous extremism.

As litigation progresses into 2024, the righteousness of parents’ legal position, coupled with growing public fears of the consequences of progressive ideologies, may combine to topple sex change indoctrination.  The policy decisions of progressive politicians and unelected bureaucrats will be detailed in court and exposed as well beyond the boundaries of established educational practices.

There are now federal lawsuits pending in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, and state-level actions in New Jersey and California.  Parents are arguing 14th Amendment due process rights, while the states are asserting civil rights of minors.

The federal lawsuits have the Constitution, millennia of Judeo-Christian heritage of the unparalleled importance of the family as the essential building block of civil society, and a long history of Supreme Court rulings affirming the liberty interests of parents.  In contrast, the states offer a specious defense that it is necessary to withhold information to protect a child from parents who might disapprove of a minor’s “gender change,” while at the same time disingenuously claiming that the state respects the need for parents to be informed about their children.

The current state of litigation illustrates the strength of parents’ fundamental liberty interests to direct the care, custody, and control of their children’s health care.  There is a wealth of Supreme Court decisions supporting the right of parents to make decisions for their minor children, most importantly Troxel v. Granville, in which Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “The interest of parents in the care, custody and control of their children — is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by the Court.”

In Massachusetts, an appeal on the 14th Amendment due process argument (Foote v. Ludlow School Committee) was argued in October 2023 at the First Circuit Court after a District Court judge refused to consider the due process argument in a December 2022 ruling.

The parents allege that the school district actively encouraged their 11-year-old daughter to be a boy.  After their daughter told her parents of her interest in being a boy, the parents informed the district that they, not school personnel, would address her health care issues.  Instead, under district policy, school personnel met privately with the girl, affirmed a male identity, encouraged her to use the boys’ bathroom, and instructed everyone at school to address the child as a boy.  All of this was hidden from the parents until a teacher told the couple what was occurring.  The teacher was subsequently fired.

The position of the school district is that they acted in accordance with state guidelines and have no duty to inform parents about many issues involving students in their daily care, including changes in sexual identity.  The school district said the child had no medical condition, which would have required parental permission to administer care, such as Tylenol for a headache, as required under state law.

A similar fact pattern emerged in an October lawsuit filed in southern New Jersey, where a father of three high school students sued the state Department of Education (DOE), the Cherry Hill Board of Education, and the school district in U.S. District Court over the school district’s policy to withhold information about a student’s decision to change sexual identity.  The father wants the court to declare as “unconstitutional the New Jersey Transgender Student Guidance for School Districts” as merely a model policy with no basis in statute.

The details of the case illustrate how ideologues can stretch laws meant to protect vulnerable groups well beyond the boundaries of their original intent.  In 2017, then-governor Chris Christie signed a bill to set guidelines to assist schools in establishing policies to “ensure a supportive and nondiscriminatory environment for transgender students.”  The following year, the state DOE issued a “guidance” policy that school districts may not disclose a student’s transgender status except as allowed by law.

The Cherry Hill lawsuit states that “the governing statutory framework and its attendant legislative intent never contemplated the removal of parents from the conversation regarding transitioning or transgender students.”

According to the lawsuit, “students are invited on a continuing basis to have confidential discussions with school district personnel on the subject of gender, chosen name, pronouns, and students’ preferences regarding parental notification.”  The policy allows schools to maintain separate records for students — one for the parents and another for internal consumption.  It is easy to conclude that the school districts may be encouraging students to change sexual identity through repetitive suggestion, explicitly without parental knowledge, and then hiding it under an elaborate system of double-bookkeeping.

There’s more.  In September, a Southern District of California judge issued a preliminary injunction against the Escondido Union School District against a school policy that allowed teachers to lie about students’ gender identity and preferred pronouns to parents.

Challenges to legislation enacted by right-leaning and swing states to prevent medical or surgical interventions are not going well for the transgender activists.  The Sixth Circuit upheld statutory bans in Tennessee and Kentucky earlier this year.  On November 6, the Biden administration took the side of the transgender activists, saying that such bans violate minors’ 14th Amendment rights to “gender-affirming care.”

In contrast, litigation at the state level is not going as well.

California is coming down hard on two districts, Murrieta Valley and Chino Valley, where school boards passed policies requiring parental notification of any change in a child’s preferred gender.  The state Department of Justice has launched a civil rights probe into Chino.  In a letter to the district, the state superintendent of schools claims that the districts are violating state law, without specifying the statute.

To provide a statute, the California legislature passed AB 957 this summer to change the state’s standard of well-being of a minor to include parental affirmation of “gender transitioning,” making parental opposition a statutory offense.  The measure passed the Senate and Assembly by wide margins.  Governor Gavin Newsom, with an eye on running for president, vetoed it in September.

In New Jersey, the state’s Division of Civil Rights has filed complaints against school boards in Middletown, Matalan-Englishtown, and Marlboro for having the temerity to require that their district schools notify parents of expressions of interest in another sexual identity.  Unfortunately, the New Jersey school boards are likely to be shot down by the state courts.  The judge handling the case has temporarily blocked parental notification pending further legal developments.

In another case in Hanover Township, a Superior Court judge in October stopped the district from notifying parents about changes in gender identification, saying the policy could force personnel to violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws.  New Jersey’s attorney general has filed a civil rights complaint against the district.

The fight at the state level is complicated by the fact that progressive states laid the groundwork by putting in place “guidance” policies recommending that schools withhold information from parents if the child does not want the parents to know about his or her “gender transitioning,” cross-dressing, or change of name.  Prevailing at the state level is also made more difficult by liberal politicians, their appointees to state education boards, and the judges who depend upon the support of these politicians.

The school districts’ spin is that minors have the right to change sexual identities and schools have a duty to protect the minors from their disapproving parents.  That weak rationale is crumbling as evidence mounts that “counseling” by school personnel is systematic pressure.  In fact, withholding information about sexual identity is the exception to most school policies concerning student health, conduct, and interpersonal relations.

These cases are destined for the Supreme Court, which will weigh the longstanding Judeo-Christian tradition of parental rights to control the care and education of their children against the risible rationale that school personnel must protect “transitioning” minors from disapproving parents.  Indeed, most parents believe that “transitioning” is a contrived and potentially dangerous construct that has no place in public education.  Common sense holds that parents, not the state, have the best interests of their progeny in mind and have a multitude of reasons for ensuring their health and well-being.

It is a sad commentary on our once-envied public educational system that public opposition to the progressive-backed transgender movement, rather than poor instruction, declining test scores, and worsening student discipline, may be the catalyst for a long-overdue overhaul of the American public school system.

Linda R. Killian is a retired financial analyst and a local Republican chairman.

Image via Pxfuel.