Wisconsin parents sue state over schools keeping children's gender secret from parents

Wisconsin parents petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to hear their complaint against the Eau Claire School District over its policy of aiding students with gender transitions without parental consent or awareness.

The petition urged the Supreme Court to determine whether parents have legal standing to challenge the covert "gender transition" policies in their school districts. Attorneys for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty noted that nearly 30 similar lawsuits have been filed by parents across the country, and they believe it's time for the high court to look at the legality of these cases following the dismissal of comparable lawsuits by inferior courts due to lack of standing.

The attorneys wrote in the petition that several hundred school districts adopted secretive policies "to facilitate minor students, often of any age, changing their gender identity at school," which included keeping a student's preferred pronouns and what bathroom they use a secret from the child's parents.

"Thousands of school districts across our country have these policies. If parents cannot challenge them until after their children are harmed, they have no way to protect their kids other than pulling them from public school," wrote Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty deputy counsel Luke Berg in a statement about the petition.

The petition contended, "When a school district has an explicit policy to supersede parental authority over a major and controversial health-related decision and to conceal this from parents when the issue arises, parents are immediately harmed; they have lost their control over this critical decision. Courts can remedy that harm by declaring such policies unconstitutional, enjoining school districts from applying them, and requiring schools to defer to parents, as they do for every other major decision involving a minor child."

"This court should take this case to establish that parents subject to such policies have standing to challenge them," the petition stated. 

Officials from the Biden administration have pushed the federal government to impose transgender policy in public schools. New rules that would allow students to use their preferred locker rooms and restrooms as well as apply for scholarships for the opposite sex were recently unveiled by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. These regulations would redefine "sex discrimination" to include sex characteristics, pregnancy, "sexual orientation," and "gender identity."