Finally a judge that uses common sense and gives a win for child safety. The only reason these parents are demanding to know if their child is not being a “traditional good cis straight kid” is so they can fix them. If the kid thinks they will be unsafe or their parents would react badly they are in the best position to know. If they tell a teacher that their parents would freak out, that they are anti-trans anti-gay, if they tell the teacher the parents are highly religious the chances are the kids will be in trouble and or forced into conversion therapy or isolated from friends and support. Why else would it be so critically important for a parent to know? It is not dangerous or harmful for a kid to be gay / lesbian or use a different pronoun than the cis ones. If the parents wanted to be supportive, they would let the child know that and would wait for the child to feel comfortable to come out to them. No this is about parents who want to stop the child from being who they are. These are parents who think that the kids are making a lifestyle choice rather than that they are born this way. So they will demand the kids not chose to be what they really are. If they must punish a kid to be straight or punish a kid to be cis, they will do so. Hard and to the extreme! That is why they are going to such lengths to know what the kids are doing / saying at school. The decision to come out or be public about one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a very personal one that should be up to the person entirely. If they are not yet comfortable with being out / open why would anyone think it is OK to force that on them, especially kids? Hugs
Photo: ShutterstockFederal Judge Paul Grimm from the District of Maryland has thrown out a lawsuit from parents who opposed a school district’s plan to support its transgender students.
Three unidentified parents filed the lawsuit in October 2021 against Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education. The parents said the district’s guidelines on student gender identity violated state laws and the U.S. Constitution by encouraging school staff to keep a child’s chosen gender identity hidden from parents.
The guidelines state that students can disclose their gender identity to school staff as well as the level of support they anticipate receiving from their caretakers at home. However, the guidelines also state that school staff members aren’t required to disclose a student’s gender identity to a child’s parents unless they are legally required or authorized by the student.
The suing parents said that the guidelines violated the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a 1974 law that gives parents the right to access their children’s educational records.
The parents also said the guidelines violate the Maryland Declaration of Rights provision allowing adults to “direct the care, custody, education, welfare, safety, and control of their minor children” as well as the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment Due Process clause.
In their lawsuit, the parents said the guidelines are “expressly designed to circumvent parental involvement in a pivotal decision affecting [their children’s] care, health education, and future,” The Washington Times reported.
The parents also claimed that the policy would allow children “to transition socially to a different gender identity at school without parental notice or consent”. While the district policy allows students to use the pronouns and gendered facilities of their choosing, it doesn’t authorize the school to provide any other sorts of gender affirming medical or mental health care.
Grimm disagreed with the parents’ arguments. In his decision, the judge wrote that the guidelines are meant to be flexible and don’t necessarily instruct school staff to hide such information from parents.
In fact, in a statement hailing Grimm’s ruling, the Montgomery County Board of Education wrote, “The Court rightly found that our Guidelines for Gender Identity actively encourage familial involvement in developing and implementing a transgender or gender nonconforming student’s ‘Gender Support Plan’ whenever possible.”
The parents’ attorney Rick Claybrook said his clients are considering an appeal to Grimm’s ruling.
Mark Eckstein, chair of the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations’ LGBTQ subcommittee, said that some parents are opposed to the guidelines because there isn’t a lot of case law on the subject, Bethesda Magazine wrote.
“The ideal situation is to get the parents and child together and get everyone on the same page, but when that doesn’t happen, for whatever reason, it creates conflict,” Eckstein told the magazine. “But you do have a lot of instances where a child is out at school, but not at home. It’s not easy whatever way you cut it. Even if everyone is at their best, it’s a complicated situation.”
This isn’t the first time parents have sued over such a law.
In August, the right-leaning group Parents Defending Education (PDE) sued the Linn-Mar Community School District of Iowa over a similar policy using similar legal reasoning.
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