Coalition of AGs support parents’ rights against school pronoun policies in SCOTUS brief

(Daily Caller News Foundation) – A group of Republican attorneys general filed a brief before the Supreme Court Thursday backing parents seeking to sue a Maryland school district over a pronoun policy.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision that parents lacked legal standing to challenge a Montgomery County Public Schools policy that allowed school officials to hide students’ gender transitions from parents, according to Reuters. Republican Attorney  General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia led a group of 17 state AGs who urged the Supreme Court to hear the appeal in the brief filed with the Supreme Court, saying the policy “deprives parents of key information about their children’s lives.” 

“This egregious policy completely sidesteps parents’ rights and severs them from having involvement in their child’s physical, emotional, mental and social well-being,” Morrisey said in a Thursday release. “Any time any organization or institution seeks to hide what they do when our children are in their care, it’s a huge red flag. Why would a school board encourage students to keep secrets from their parents?”

Parents sued school districts in recent years over efforts to transition children socially without the parents’ knowledge in multiple states. A 12-year-old girl reportedly attempted suicide in Florida while administrators were carrying out a social transition without informing her parents, Fox News reported.

“The Policy’s secret nature deprives parents of key information about their children’s lives and deprives them of the information they’d need to sue,” the attorneys general said in the brief filed with the Supreme Court. “And once parents know that their child is exploring his or her gender identity, the parents’ harm—and thus standing to sue—may be gone.  Family ties, then, will fall by the wayside.” 

A California school district paid a $100,000 settlement to Jessica Konen to end a lawsuit over an effort by two teachers to help Konen’s daughter socially transition secretly.