Parents sue school district for addressing daughter with male pronouns over their objections

A couple in Wisconsin are suing a school district that they say attempted to usurp their parental authority, encouraging their daughter to “become” a boy against their expressed wishes that the district continue to treat her as a girl.

Filed on Nov.17 by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom in Waukesha County Circuit Court, the lawsuit charges that Kettle Moraine School District ignored the rights of the girls’ parents and pushed the 12-year-old girl toward a life-changing commitment for which she was not ready.

According to The Daily Signal, Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Kate Anderson said the case is a reaction to “dangerous” policies in states including Wisconsin, Virginia, and Washington.

” … These policies are so dangerous because they’re allowing schools to encourage students to begin transitioning into a gender identity that isn’t in accord with their biological sex, and then not inform their parents, and in many cases lie to the parents affirmatively about what their student is doing at school.”

According to a letter sent by the lawyers to the district in May, in December of 2020 the 12-year-old girl began exhibiting “rapid onset gender dysphoria” as well as “significant anxiety and depression.” Her parents temporarily took her out of school to go to a mental health center where she could deal with her feelings. That center “quickly ‘affirmed’ that she was really a transgender boy and encouraged her to transition to a male identity,” the attorneys continued. “In early January, she expressed to her parents and school staff that she wanted to adopt a male name and pronouns when she returned to school.”

The girl’s parents felt that “immediately transitioning would not be in their daughter’s best interest,” the letter said, and they asked the school to continue using her legal name and female pronouns.

The district refused to do so, the attorneys wrote, and the parents “were told that, pursuant to District policy, school staff would be required to address their daughter using a male name and pronouns if that’s what she wanted.”

The parents withdrew her from the school district and halted contact with the mental health center and therapist she had been seeing, the letter said, “concerned that daily affirmation of a male identity could harm their daughter.”

When the school district ignored the letter, Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release, the parents were left with no other option but to sue, challenging the school’s policy that lets students who are minors change their names and their pronouns at school without parental consent.

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