Parents sue school district for allowing their child to use male pronouns, WI lawsuit says
Parents are suing a Wisconsin school district they say allowed their 12-year-old child to use a male name and pronouns without their consent.
The lawsuit against Kettle Moraine School District in Wales, Wisconsin, dated Nov. 17, said it seeks to “vindicate” the constitutional rights of the parents, and lists two sets of parents as plaintiffs.
The school district’s policy of allowing children to choose their own gender identity led one set of parents to withdraw their 12-year-old from the district to “protect (the child) and preserve their parental role,” according to the lawsuit and a news release from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit and advocacy group.
McClatchy News reached out to the school district for comment and did not immediately receive a response.
The second set of parents currently have two children in the Kettle Moraine School District and joined the lawsuit to stop what they call the “unconstitutional policy,” the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, the district violated the fundamental right parents hold to raise their children by allowing a student to use pronouns of their choosing without the consent of parents, regardless if they object.
The lawsuit said the district has a policy — either “written or unwritten” — of allowing students to “socially transition” to a different gender identity.
The parents say that in Dec. 2020, their then-12-year-old was depressed, exhibiting significant amounts of anxiety and began questioning their gender. The lawsuit said the child was temporarily on a leave of absence from school to go to a mental health center. The mental health center affirmed the child’s questioning and encouraged the 12-year-old to transition and use a boy name and pronouns.
That month, the lawsuit said, the preteen told school staff and their parents that they wished to use to male pronouns when returning to school. The parents decided against this and said it would not be in their child’s best interest to transition at that time, and wanted the child to “explore the cause of (their) feelings.” (10) The parents informed the school of their wishes, according to the lawsuit.
However, according to the lawsuit, the principal informed the parents that in accordance with district policy, they would allow the 12-year-old to be called whatever name they wanted, with whatever pronouns they wished.
The parents then “immediately withdrew” their child from the district, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claimed that while their child was at home for weeks without attending school, the 12-year-old decided against transitioning to a male identity. The child allegedly told their mother that “affirmative care really messed me up,” and said the mother was correct to not allow the transition.
The new school district the child was enrolled in told the parents that they would also follow the same protocol as Kettle Moraine. After hearing this, according to the lawsuit, the parents said they wanted to establish their constitutional rights as parents and filed the lawsuit.
“Parents’ rights to direct the upbringing, education, and mental health treatment of their children is one of the most basic constitutional rights every parent holds dear. Yet we are seeing more and more school districts across the country not only ignoring parents’ concerns, but actively working against them,” the parents’ lawyer Kate Anderson, director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, said in the news release.
A Feb. 2021 Gallup poll found that more Americans than ever identify as LGBTQ — including nearly 16% of Americans in Generation Z, which is made up of those born between 1997 and 2002.
A May 2021 report from The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focusing on LGBTQ youth suicide prevention, found that “more than half” of transgender and nonbinary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the past year. But those who had their pronouns respected by those they live with reported “attempted suicide at half the rate of those who did not have their pronouns respected by anyone with whom they lived,” according to the report.
