Parent Alert: Supreme Court Sends Clear Signal that Secret Gender Transition Policies are Unconstitutional
As Massachusetts teachers take to Facebook to out themselves as secret keepers, SCOTUS sends a message that their time is coming to an end.
We come to you today with an exciting update on a topic we’ve been talking about already: secret social “gender transitions” at school.
Just last month we exposed the Leominster Public Schools and their “Gender Support Plans” that specifically cut out parents who are not “affirming” and - not only let the school keep secrets - but instruct their teachers to do so as well. One teacher objected to this, and was soon out of a job. You can read our full reporting below.
When we shared this article in the MIP facebook group, some of the comments reinforced what we already knew - that not only is this a real issue in Leominster, but it’s happening in other towns as well. Here are a few of the comments:
What the thread also showed was that, unlike the brave teacher in Leominster who protected parental rights, there are also teachers who have - and use - many excuses for lying to parents.
This teacher’s comments follow a pattern we have seen in MIP before, and reported on here in the past. Progressive ideologues, especially educators, often visit groups like ours to leave comments that gaslight parents, downplay their legitimate concerns, or greatly misconstrue their true beliefs or intentions. In this case, it appears to be the third. While her comments act like she’s just trying to be nice and “make kids feel comfortable,” a gander at her public FB profile shows what she really thinks about parents who think differently than herself. These are just two such examples.
In this case, the teacher works at a pricy private school, so there are parents currently paying upwards of $50k per year for what they believe is a superior education, only to have their rights and views discarded by a teacher who thinks they are “either evil or ignorant” (or who believes their home might not be a “safe” place if they don’t want to trans their elementary-schooler). Following her comments, we reminded this teacher that if she truly believes that a child is not “safe” at home, as a mandated reporter, she should be calling the authorities. But that if that’s not the case, then “safety” is not an excuse to lie to parents. Also, given that her public social media posts are vehemently anti-Republican, we recommended that she check out the work of Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender. Protecting kids from gender ideology and respecting parental rights need not be partisan issues - in fact, they shouldn’t be.
You can read the whole comment thread for yourself here.
A week later, another post in MIP about secret gender transitions yielded similar comments, this time from public school teachers in two other Massachusetts towns. These teachers also didn’t seem to see the harm in playing along with a child’s self-appointed identity at school, and employed various justifications for doing so. You can read that whole thread, including their comments, here.
We know there are many excellent teachers who respect the rights and role of parents when it comes to gender identity. And we also know that many of those who don’t appear to, probably still mean well on some level. There are some radical activist teachers who use their position to indoctrinate students in a number of areas, including gender and sexuality, and those people have no business being in the classroom. However, most average teachers who might casually “affirm” a child’s gender confusion aren’t doing so because they have an agenda. They are doing so because they’ve been told it’s the right thing to do. We are not “out to get” these teachers - we want to change their minds.
Not every teacher who keeps secrets from parents has bad intentions. But they are wrong, and the list of excuses for ignorance about the dangers of social transition grows shorter daily. If you are a teacher who has never thought about the downside of affirming a child’s chosen name and pronouns, it’s time to do so. To learn more about the harms of social transition - the psychological intervention you yourself are participating in when you keep “gender”-related secrets from parents - start HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
The tide is turning on this issue, and teachers, it’s not too late to change with it. We wrote last month about how two major medical associations, the American Society for Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have shifted their guidance concerning “gender affirming care” for minors. The medical treatments that have long relied on “consensus” for acceptance can no longer do so. If you missed our reporting on this issue, read it here.
And earlier this week, SCOTUS dropped a decision that affirms the rights of California parents to direct the upbringing of their children, specifically as it relates to “gender transitions” in schools. This watershed decision sends a clear message that our nation’s highest court views keeping secrets from parents as a constitutional violation. To learn more about this, see the blog post from the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center reprinted below.
If you are a parent and you want to inform your district that they do not have a right to use another name or pronouns for your child without your consent, submit our opt out letter today! You can access it here.
The question now is, will Massachusetts schools heed this signal from SCOTUS, which comes on the heels of a $1.5 million decision against a Maryland district that denied parental opt outs and a $2 million decision against a psychologist and plastic surgeon for their role in a minor’s gender transition? Or will they wait for the law to force them to do the right thing, potentially risking legal liability in the process?
Time will tell, and we’ll be watching.
Now, here is our legal update from Attorney Sam Whiting of the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center (published yesterday, March 3rd). You can also read this on the MLLC blog here.
BREAKING: Supreme Court Sends Clear Signal that Secret Gender Transition Policies are Unconstitutional
Yesterday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a remarkable decision that struck a major blow against secret gender transition policies in public schools across the country.
We’ve been keeping you informed about these despicable policies in Massachusetts public schools, which require teachers to lie to parents about their own children and cover up students’ gender dysphoria. In 2022, we filed a federal lawsuit against Ludlow Public Schools after staff there hid a child’s gender confusion from her parents and then continued calling her by the wrong pronouns even after the parents demanded that they stop socially transitioning their child. Last summer, we filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear our case, which is still pending before the Court.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision dramatically changed the legal landscape. The case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, involves strikingly similar facts to our own case in Ludlow: California passed a law that requires schools to hide students’ gender identities from parents unless the students consent, and requires teachers to use students’ “preferred pronouns” even if parents object. After parents sued, a federal district court issued a permanent injunction that forced the state to back down. But when California appealed the decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put the injunction on hold.
Now, however, the U.S. Supreme court has granted the parents’ emergency petition to put the injunction back in place. The Court issued a short opinion stating that the parents were likely to succeed not only on their religious liberty claims against the California laws but also on their parental rights claims. It stated that “under long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to the upbringing and education of children.”
This is a resounding win for parents. While this opinion was not a final decision on the merits of the case, it strongly signals to lawmakers and schools that secret transition policies are unconstitutional. However, final victory won’t be achieved until the Supreme Court sets a binding precedent in a case – like our case out of Ludlow – and definitively holds that schools cannot conceal students’ gender dysphoria from parents. We are more optimistic than ever that this will happen soon. The future of thousands of children may depend on it.
Please join us in praying for final victory on this issue and support MFI so that we can continue to protect parental rights!
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Excellent write-up.