A Wisconsin judge ruled on Tuesday against a school district’s policy of adopting students’ preferred pronouns and names without obtaining parental consent, a decision cheered as a “groundbreaking legal win” for parents’ rights.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell granted summary judgment to parents who sued the Kettle Moraine School District in southeastern Wisconsin, finding the district violated the rights of parents to make medical decisions on behalf of their children.
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Attorneys for the two families that filed the 2021 lawsuit described the ruling as a pivotal victory for parents’ rights as school districts across the nation adopt policies allowing children to undergo social transitions without their parents’ knowledge or permission.
“This victory represents a major win for parental rights,” said Luke Berg, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in Milwaukee.
Teachers and staffers have sued in recent years over being required to use preferred pronouns or conceal students’ social transitions from parents, but the institute called the Wisconsin ruling “groundbreaking” and a “first-of-its-kind win against a school’s gender-transition policy to circumvent parents.”
“The court confirmed that parents, not educators or school faculty, have the right to decide whether a social transition is in their own child’s best interests,” Mr. Berg said. “The decision should be a warning to the many districts across the country with similar policies to exclude parents from gender transitions at school.”
The case was brought by two sets of parents. The first pulled their 12-year-old daughter, A.F., out of middle school after the district said it would abide by her wishes to change her name and pronouns. The girl ultimately decided not to change genders after leaving the school.
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The district argued that the lawsuit should be thrown out, saying the cases were either no longer relevant or hypothetical.
Judge Maxwell disagreed, saying the “injury that they may suffer is not too far attenuated so as to make the injury ‘hypothetical.’”
“As mentioned by the expert affidavits, and as seen through A.F., this is an issue that can arise seemingly out of nowhere,” he said, “and the School District has already shown by their actions that their policy is a willingness to go against parental wishes when handling the medical treatment of gender dysphoria in minors through affirming them by social transition.”
The district also cited concerns that refusing to use a child’s preferred pronouns would violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, but Judge Maxwell found that “Title IX is not applicable.”
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Kate Anderson, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel, said parents have a constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children, yet school districts nationwide are “not only ignoring parents’ concerns but actively working against them.”
“The court was right to respect the serious concerns of these parents by holding that Kettle Moraine School District’s policy, which undermines parents and harms children, violates the Wisconsin Constitution,” she said.
The ADF and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty represented the parents.
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