Parents seek Supreme Court intervention in battle against WI school district’s transgender policies

A group of Wisconsin parents are asking the Supreme Court to intervene in their effort to overturn a district policy that allows parents to be kept in the dark if their child decides to identify as transgender.

The parents want the Supreme Court to recognize that they have standing to challenge an Eau Claire Area School District policy that does not require parents to be notified if their child decides to change names/pronouns or start using opposite sex facilities. Represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and America First Legal asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday in a petition for writ of certiorari to allow it to challenge the Eau Claire policy.

“Thousands of school districts across our country have these policies,” WILL Deputy Attorney Luke Berg said in a statement obtained by The Daily Wire. “If parents cannot challenge them until after their children are harmed, they have no way to protect their kids other than pulling them from public school.”

A lower federal court previously struck down an effort by the parents to challenge the policy, saying that they lacked standing because none of their children had yet been harmed by the policy. The parents say that their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights as well as their parental right to make decisions about the care, custody, and control of their children have been violated by the policy.

“When a school district adopts an explicit policy to usurp parental decision-making authority over a major health-related decision—and to conceal this from the parents—parents who are subject to such a policy have standing to challenge it,” the Wednesday legal filing from WILL said.

The school has stood by the policy, saying that the goal of the policy is to get the parents on board with their child’s change in gender identity.

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“Is federal standing law so constrained that when a school district openly declares what it will do when a child expresses a desire to transition — that it will not only make the decision for parents about whether that is in the child’s best interest, but will also hide it from them — parents are powerless to challenge that policy until after their children have been harmed by it, hope they discover it, and even then, good luck overcoming all the other obstacles?” the filing added.

Parents across the country have pushed for more transparency at public schools, especially pushing back against policies that allow a child’s so-called “gender transition” to be hidden from the parents.

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