Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and 15 other attorneys general have filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding schools that help students make “social gender transitions” without their parents’ knowledge. Such as transition would include using a different bathroom, locker room, name, or gender pronoun at school and keeping that information secret from the parents.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is leading the amicus. “It is essential that schools work with parents, not against them, to support a child’s well-being,” Miyares said. “Parents have the right to be involved in major decisions affecting their children’s lives.”
As has occurred in the Anchorage School District, the Eau Claire, Wisconsin. school district enacted rules to help students change their identities at school and keep that information from their parents. The district is at the heart of this parent-driven lawsuit.
The district policies, as in Anchorage, allows male students to use the female bathrooms and locker rooms, according to how they feel their gender should be, or allowing boy-like females to use males’ private facilities.
The Eau Claire district told administrators to develop “Student Gender Support Plan(s),” which could include information on students’ medical and surgical transition intentions.
“Amici States have a compelling interest in protecting parents’ fundamental right to make decisions about “the care, custody, and control of their children,” the brief to the Supreme Court stated. “In fact, many Amici States have constitutional or legal protections for parents’ rights enshrined in state law. This case presents the opportunity for this Court to reiterate that government officials cannot interfere with this right—“perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by” this Court—just because the government officials believe that they know better.”
The Seventh Circuit dismissed the case, concluding that the parents who are challenging the school district’s gender transition policy had not asserted a concrete injury because they did not allege that the policy had been applied to their specific students.
The state attorney generals said, “This conclusion, however, is based on an erroneously cramped view of parental rights and this Court’s precedents. The parent-child relationship is directly harmed when a school district tells minor students that secrets from their parents—including an entire double life at school— are not only acceptable, but will be facilitated by the District. The district’s policy also hopelessly conflicts with constitutionally protected parental rights. Parents, not administrators, have the responsibility and right to raise their children.”
“The Seventh Circuit’s decision thus contributes to a rapidly-expanding — and increasingly confusing — area of law. Gender transition policies like the one at issue in this case have proliferated around the country. Unsurprisingly, so has litigation over these policies. Judicial decisions arising from these challenges are a jumbled mess, with many courts evicting parents from the courthouse on standing grounds, and few reaching the merits to protect parents’ rights. This Court’s intervention is needed to bring clarity, before more parents and children are injured,” the brief said.
The school district in Wisconsin has a written statement about its responsibility to keep parents informed of student welfare and progress in school. But not for gender issues, evidently. Those are different.
“Yet Respondents’ Gender Identity Support guidance blocks parents from learning more about certain aspects of their children’s conduct in school. Because, according to the guidance, ‘[s]ome transgender, non-binary, and/or gender-non- conforming students are not ‘open’ at home for reasons that may include safety concerns or lack of acceptance,’ Respondents allowed students to make changes to their gender identity, names, and pronouns without parental notice or consent,” the brief said.
In other words, the school can decide what aspect of a child’s “welfare and progress” could be discussed with the parent, stripping parents of their right to know.
A petition for a writ of certiorari was filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and America First Legal. They want the Supreme Court to decide if parents have legal standing to challenge what is “an explicit policy to usurp parental decision making” and to programmatically conceal student information from parents. Key to the lawsuit is the question of how a parent could even have standing to sue a school district for concealing such major life-changing information if the parent is not made aware of that information.
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, Miyares, and the other attorneys general point out an opinion from Judge Paul Niemeyer of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said such a school policy undermines parents’ constitutional rights and that parents didn’t have an option of choosing another policy for their children.
“This case presents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to provide much-needed clarity and reaffirm that government officials cannot override parents’ fundamental rights simply because they believe they know better,” Miyares said.
The amicus brief describes training that is given to teachers that put them in positions between parents and students. The training material is “targeting religious parents for special condemnation, claiming that the ‘weaponization of religious beliefs against marginalized people is the problem.'” and that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.”
In addition to Taylor and Miyares, the other attorneys general represent Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
To teachers and employees at ASD that don’t want to be subjected to complying with this outrageous rules, I suggest looking for positions at the Mat-Su School District.
I also think that these kinds of policies being pushed at ASD are one of the reasons local news attempts to do its hit pieces against Mat-Su.
The Alaska Constitution guarantees privacy, we have no standing to join lawsuits in other State’s that invade privacy.
How is interfering with parental rights considered a breach of privacy? If anything, the schools breach the parental considerations of privacy concerning the welfare of their own children. Really, Frank, don’t spout nonsense. Aren’t you better than that?
Conservatives proclaim they are “textualists” when it comes to the Constitution, until they dont like the text
Frank, whose privacy are you speaking about? Are you referring to a school district’s so-called privacy? If that is so, do you believe school districts can keep any and all student behavior including the use of drugs from parents.
THANK YOU 😊 We all have got to take this child abuse very serious!!! Back in the day, my biggest concern was when my 13 year old son got a tattoo from a guy that learned his trade in prison! That pales in comparison to what is going on in our schools behind parent’s backs today!
I said it once and I’ll say it again, SOOOO glad I homeschool my kids!
You and me both. We do need to stay in the battle though for protection of kids and parental rights.
Same here, my child has been doing so much better now that I homeschool her. She’s even pulling ahead.
It’s amazing how as parents we’re responsible for feeding them, clothing them, educating them (where allowed), their overall health, and and legal challenges our kids get into.
But the state lets them have abortions and can change their gender (socially, now-what next week), and in blue states will take our kids from us if we object to them mutilating themselves.
Lenin is both smiling and saying WTF at the same time.
Or better yet, get your kids out of public schools
If a teen is so afraid of their parents to the point where they trust a school official more than their parents to help them through a rough spot in the growing up process, whose fault is that? School policies that aim to support LGBTQ+ kids while maintaining their privacy are designed only for the minority of parents who are so hostile to their kids’ needs that they are a threat to their kids’ well-being. Parents who threaten their queer kids with beatings, homelessness, a withdrawal of financial or emotional support, forcing them into “conversion therapy,” etc. have forfeited their parental rights.
Most parents aren’t doing all that. Do you think it’s right that schools do their own conversion therapy behind parents back to transition kids? The kids will get it into their head that they need surgery, then they’ll be a hospital patient for life.
It is not for you or the schools to decide. Not at all. You call social services, or law enforcement if the child is in danger. You do not, ever get to decide on life changing decisions of a child you did not raise.
How does one know the people in the schools aren’t doing this for their own agenda? Their own reasons? We all know there’s lots of freaks out there. You read every day of teachers getting arrested for, shall we say ‘inappropriate’ relationships with kids.
Yes, we all know what’s happening.
That’s why they have OCS.
As parents we are liable for our children’s actions until they are 18.
If the schools are taking over that responsibility- we will see how far that goes within a lawsuit or two when a teen becomes an adult and changes their mind.
Or the teen that has no control over the chaos that is going on around them and is simply trying to have privacy.
Girls get periods and it’s hormonal and physical and socially a big change.
If a boy feels like he is in the wrong body.
Then she/he/they also must be equipped with the emotional genuine gene to give space.
Don’t take space – make space.
There is a place in the world for everyone.
As a teen, and as an adult, I do not miss those days of incredible right here right now and the fear of missing out or especially being left out. Or looked over or looked at.
It is a lot.
So all I can say is to this newer generation-leave space between yourselves.
Pick your battles.
Do not use the faults and misgivings of us who are older and use our old ways as your tools to fight amongst each other.
Do better.
Breathe freely.
The fact is we are going to end up dying before you anyways.
If nothing else, let that fact give you some peace.
Until then – enjoy being young!
I know, I also felt it impossible to enjoy life when I was young..
But at least you are not old yet. Jaded. Arthritis. Needing a mesh in your v-jay hay because you gave birth to you little F’s and now all your goodies have collapsed on themselves.
U you oh don’t know if a sneeze will end up in some other disaster.
Your nipples aren’t yet a sad face looking like a hobo trying to catch a train carrying all horrifying PTSD memories if you little F’s biting the youth from what was once a runway attraction that has been reduced to a carnival or side show attraction.
Your stomach has not gained some much skin that just hangs there mindless and happy.
You get to the point of feeling like, ‘why would I ruin that one part of my body that does not hurt or ache?’
Hence the saying, I sadly guess…
Hang loose.
As someone who has watched close family friends deal with this issue, whatever Taylor does can’t come soon enough. Our friends child was in an ASD charter school and going through an emotional, hormonal time. The school nurse convinced the girl that she really was a boy. The transition began and by the time the parents, who were involved daily in the child’s life, found out, it was too late. When the girl got ahold of her senses, she received threats from the other students in this ASD charter school. This is real. This is insidious. This is vicious. It needs to stop. People need to go to jail and practice their gender ideology there rather than in school.
“The most important fact about the subject of education is that there is no such thing. Education is not a subject and it does not deal in subjects. It is instead the transfer of a way of life.” – G.K. Chesterton
Education is not merely imparting knowledge in core subjects like math, science, or history. Sure, our kids are taught those subjects along the way but at its heart, the “education” they receive is really about shaping their worldview and values.
When we send our kids off to school, we are entrusting them to people and institutions who, in many cases, do not share our values or vision for what is right and true.
Unfortunately, much of what is taught in schools today is agenda-driven.
This is why we, as parents, grandparents, and good teachers, have to take things into our own hands.
We can’t afford to be indifferent to the “way of life” being transferred to our kids. As concerned adults we need to take seriously the responsibility to guard the “way of life” we are transferring to our next generation.
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