Parent's Rights?

The right-wingers still try to push the envelope.

In gender clash, Maine schools caught between parents, kids
The handling of gender identity at public schools has emerged as a new front in the culture war, pitting children's privacy against some parents who fear educators are cutting them out of key conversations.
Press Herald
By Lana Cohen
February 5, 2023


The mother of a middle schooler choked up as she stood before her school board in Damariscotta and accused the district of violating her rights as a parent by not telling her that her child wanted to be identified as a boy instead of a girl.

“A social worker at the school encouraged a student to keep a secret from their parents,” she told the board in December.

Days later, the counselor and superintendent were named in an email from an anonymous sender that called them child abusers who had “forfeited” their “right to life” and threatened violence, shutting down a school for the day and triggering an ongoing police investigation. A second round of similar threats closed the school again last month.

The handling of gender identity in public schools has emerged as a new front in the culture war that is fueling efforts across the state and nation to ban library books and remove classroom posters, and is becoming a wedge issue in politics from school board contests to presidential campaigns. At the center of the debate is a question: What, if anything at all, should an educator do if a student changes their gender identity at school and the parents don’t know?

[…]

There is no clear legal framework for schools in handling the situation, so decisions about how to best support transgender students often end up in the hands of local school districts and school board members. The situation also must be handled with care, experts say, because transgender youth are a particularly vulnerable population, at greater risk of bullying and violence, substance use, poor mental health and suicide compared with their cisgender counterparts — although research shows that affirming the identity of transgender youth can help prevent these negative mental health outcomes.

This is going to be a very hard case to call, it is going to be a very political case filled with emotions.

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There was two court cases that went in our favor and they might be an indications of how the courts may go, however parental rights is also involved. Many states courts have ruled not treating Gender Dysphoria is child abuse.

Back in 2014 Nicole Maines discrimination case went all the way to the Maine Supreme Court…

Court orders Orono school district to pay $75,000 award in transgender girl’s lawsuit
Nicole Maines and her attorneys will share the payment, concluding a precedent-setting case over denied access to a student bathroom.
Portland Press Herald
By Scott Dolan
December 2, 2014


An Orono district where school administrators refused to allow a transgender girl to use a girls’ restroom has been ordered to pay a $75,000 award, the final step in a precedent-setting case decided by the state Supreme Judicial Court in January.

Although the high court’s ruling in Nicole Maines’ favor largely settled her dispute with the school district, it left the two sides to work out the remaining details in Penobscot County Superior Court.

So the reporter is wrong!

Then there was a federal Supreme Court case of Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board in 2020. The Washington Post wrote,

The school board appealed the 4th Circuit’s decision, meaning Grimm’s case was once again up for consideration by the Supreme Court. In late June, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Grimm’s case, although Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have accepted it.

As is customary, the Supreme Court did not give a reason for its rejection — which was widely interpreted as a major victory for transgender rights activists, given it allows the August ruling from the 4th Circuit court to stand.

Which was that it was violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by schools.

So the new Maine case is going to have a very uphill time trying rule in favor of the child.