Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) and 15 other attorneys general have filed an amicus brief on behalf of their states asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case about schools’ covert efforts to transition children into sexually confused transvestites without their parents’ knowledge.
“Parents have the right to be involved in important decisions that affect their children’s lives. This case represents an opportunity for the United States Supreme Court to provide much-needed clarity and reaffirm that government officials cannot ignore parents’ fundamental rights simply because they think they know better,” Miyares said.
Said In a statement.
background
A group of Wisconsin parents filed a lawsuit in 2022 against the Eau Claire Area School District.
guidance It informed schools and staff on how to respond to students who suffer from gender-related delusions.
The guidance is:
Confirmed A school district spokesperson said at the time that “some transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming students may not be ‘open’ at home due to safety concerns or a lack of acceptance.”
Therefore, school personnel were instructed to first discuss the issue with the student before considering discussing it with the student’s parents.
Parents’
Complaints The policy “requires schools and teachers to conceal important information about a child’s health from parents and take measures specifically designed to alter a child’s mental and physical health. Specifically, the policy permits and requires school district employees to treat a child as if he or she were of the opposite sex without the parent’s knowledge or consent by changing the child’s name, pronouns, and use of sexual facilities.”
The teachers were obviously
Instructed “Parents have no right to know the identity of their children” and such “knowledge must be acquired.”
Educators in the district apparently took the guidance to heart, texting one student, “If your parents don’t accept your identity, I’m your mom.”
“The apparent purpose of this secrecy is to prevent parents from making important decisions regarding their minor children, from interfering with the ideological activities of schools, from caring for their children, or from freely exercising their religion,” the parents’ lawsuit read. “The insidious violations of parental rights at issue in this case are unacceptable to a free and liberty-loving nation.”
The plaintiffs, represented by America First Legal and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, alleged that the school district violated fundamental parental rights under the 14th Amendment and Article I, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution, as well as constitutionally protected religious freedom.
“We are pleased to be working with the SEC to bring this case to justice,” said Stephen Miller, president of America First Legal.
stress It begins: “An Eau Claire school has embraced a horrifying plan to secretly ‘change’ the gender of children as young as 5 without parental consent, essentially subjecting them to an unnatural thought experiment that goes against their health and biology.”
Setbacks
Case,
Parents Protecting Their Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area School DistrictThe case was brought through the courts to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Court of Appeal
Domination On March 7, the court ruled that the district court was correct in dismissing the parents’ lawsuit for “lack of jurisdiction.”
The court wrote, “The parent advocacy group clearly has genuine concerns about the possible application of the district’s policy. But unless the policy operates to impose harm or create an imminent risk of harm — concerns that may never arise — the association’s concerns do not establish standing to litigate and therefore do not give rise to a suit or controversy. The district court had no choice but to overrule the objections for lack of Article III jurisdiction.”
To the High Court
Last month, AFL and WILL
submitted They filed a petition seeking writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court, emphasizing that contrary to the findings of the district court and the court of appeals, both the plaintiffs and petitioners in this case (a group of parents with children within the district) have been subject to an unlawful policy and have suffered direct harm.
The petition posed the question: “If a school district adopts an explicit policy that takes away parental decision-making power about important health decisions and hides them from parents, do parents who are subject to such a policy have a right to challenge the policy?”
“Government officials may not interfere with this right – perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court – simply because they think they know better.”
According to the petition, parents are harmed in a number of ways, including losing the exclusive right to decide whether a gender transition is in their child’s best interest, being denied information to which they are entitled (which is a “cognizable ‘factual injury’ for purposes of Article 3 standing”), and strained parent-child relationships caused by policies requiring students to maintain confidentiality from their parents.
The policy also superficially deprives the petitioners of their statutory rights and harms them by precluding them from now being able to withhold their consent to the gender support planning process for their children. The denial of this right to information, which is protected by the Constitution and the law,
Spokeo, Public Citizenand Akins”
Amicus Brief
The attorneys general of Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Texas and 12 other states
Amicus Brief He supported the parents in the case, stressing that they also have a “strong interest in protecting the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing, custody and control of their children.”
“This case provides an opportunity for this Court to reaffirm that this right – perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court – may not be interfered with simply because government officials believe they know better,” the brief states.
The brief noted that Article 3 standing comes down to answering the basic question, “What’s in it for you?” and that “the answer in this case is clear: Parents have a vested interest in making decisions about their children, and interference by school officials clearly amounts to harm.”
moreover,”[s]Absent evidence of abuse or neglect, coercive or not, school districts have no interest in completely concealing a child’s gender transition from parents. “Simply because a parent’s decision is unacceptable or dangerous to the child, the authority to make that decision does not automatically shift from the parents to a state agency or official.”
“To support the well-being of children, it is essential that schools work with, rather than against, parents,” Virginia Attorney General Miyares added in a statement.
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