Massachusetts parents hope to take their case before the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal court ruled that they do not have a constitutional right to be notified about their child’s gender transition at school.
In a February 18 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit first filed by parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri in 2022 against Ludlow Public Schools.
The lawsuit accuses school staff at Paul R. Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, of secretly encouraging their then- 11-year-old daughter to adopt a new name and different gendered pronouns while at school.
The parents argue that the school’s nondisclosure policy, which keeps a student’s requested gender identity from parents unless the student consents, violates their parental rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
JUDGE DISMISSES MA PARENTS’ LAWSUIT OVER SCHOOL GENDER POLICY, SCOLDS DISTRICT: ‘DISCONCERTING’
“[The Ludlow School Committee and implicated educators] exceeded the bounds of legitimate pedagogical concerns and usurped the role of [the plaintiffs] and other parents in the Town of Ludlow to direct the education and upbringing of their children, make medical and mental health decisions for their children and to promote and preserve family privacy and integrity,” the lawsuit alleges.
Vernadette Ramirez Broyles, President and General Counsel for the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, represented the parents in court and said that they plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
“We’re very disappointed and frankly disturbed by this decision,” Broyles told Fox News Digital. “I truly believe that parents across the nation, across Massachusetts, of all political stripes, will be disturbed by this.”
According to the lawsuit, Baird Middle School students were given a biographical video assignment by the school librarian that asked them to include their pronouns. Afterward, the plaintiffs’ daughter began receiving “unsolicited” LGBTQ video suggestions on her school computer, which made her start questioning her gender identity and sexuality, the lawsuit says.
After a teacher informed the parents that their daughter had confided in her that she was struggling with depression, self-esteem issues and confusion about her sexuality, the parents thanked the teacher and emailed teachers and school administrators to inform them they were seeking private counseling for their child. The parents directly instructed school officials to not have private conversations with their daughter about the issue.
Unbeknownst to the parents, the daughter later e-mailed the school counselor to say she was “genderqueer” and requested to be called by a new name and pronouns while at school.
The parents allege that various school officials — the librarian, principal, counselor and superintendent — violated their request by affirming and privately counseling the student about her gender identity, without their knowledge or consent, in alignment with the district’s nondisclosure policy.
A 3-judge panel of the First Circuit Court, entirely composed of Democratic presidential appointees, sided with the Ludlow school district.
The panel ruled that the district’s nondisclosure policy “does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized as a violation of the guarantees of substantive due process.”
The ruling recognized parents’ rights to be “informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child’s life,” but added that those rights “are not unlimited.”
“Parents may not invoke the Due Process Clause to create a preferred educational experience for their child in public school,” the ruling states.
The panel rejected the parents’ argument that the school’s actions constituted medical or mental health treatment, and argued that discussions about gender identity with the student were within the scope of the school’s ability to make “curricular and administrative decisions.”
The judges argued that Ludlow’s protocol followed guidance handed down by the Commonwealth’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), advising schools on how to comply with state laws against gender identity discrimination in public schools.
The DESE guidance suggests school officials accommodate a student’s requested gender identity to make them feel safe and supported and ask for their consent before informing parents, if they are 14 years of age or older.
“If a student is under 14 and is not yet in the ninth grade, the student’s parent (alone) has the authority to decide on disclosures and other student record matters,” the guidance states.
Broyles told Fox News Digital that there were a number of issues with this defense.
First, the Education Department’s guidance was voluntary, so schools were not required to follow it, she said. Second, it did not apply in this case as the students were under 14 years old, and third, this guidance still must be interpreted in light of the U.S. Constitution.
She argued the court ruling expanded the authority of school officials over the family’s “personal, intimate mental health decisions.”
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“Effectively, parents are losing the ability to direct the upbringing of their child if they choose to send their children to public schools that they pay for in their taxes. That cannot possibly be the standard for the children of the First Circuit,” she said.
The lawsuit claimed school officials also applied the gender identity protocol to their 12-year-old son, who also began using a different name and pronouns around the same time of these events. However, the federal court’s decision only focused on the younger child, saying there were “scant relevant details” provided specific to the student’s older sibling.
The Massachusetts Family Institute also represented the parents in court.
The Ludlow defendants’ attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
David Lawless, a lawyer for the Ludlow School Committee, called the First Circuit’s decision a “characteristically thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion,” Reuters reported.
The case is one of several cases nationally coming from parents suing school districts over their gender identity policies that conceal the child’s transgender identity from parents.
According to conservative education watchdog Parents Defending Education, there are at least 1,195 school districts across 37 states and Washington, D.C., that have policies that explicitly state that school officials “can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.”
President Trump signed an executive order in January calling to strip federal funding for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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