One Wisconsin mother is blasting a school policy allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their chosen gender identity without public discussion from parents.
Parents have filed a legal challenge to that policy in Doe v. Bethel Local School District Board of Education, which is now being considered by a federal appellate court.
The controversial case could make its way to the Supreme Court given the growing national attention on this topic and the flurry of similar policies, and the challenges to them, at schools nationwide.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty group involved in the case, filed a brief to the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit this week on behalf Tammy Fournier, the mother in question.
Fournier’s child was not involved in this latest case, but in another similar instance Fournier sued her own child’s school after it implemented a policy to change students’ names and pronouns without parental consent.
A Wisconsin court ruled in Fournier’s favor last fall, but similar policies still stand in schools around the nation.
Now, Fournier is speaking out on the Doe case, one of a growing number of parents taking their kids’ schools to court and speaking out.
“Many other school districts have policies empowering school employees to decide whether to treat children as the opposite sex,” the brief said. “These policies often don’t require parental notification or consent; in fact, they often prohibit disclosing the school district’s decisions to a minor student’s parents without the student’s permission.”
Proponents of the transgender policies say they are protecting students going through a difficult transition.
Opponents say parents have the right to know what is going on and the final say when it comes to their children.
”Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and healthcare of their children,” Vincent Wagner, a lawyer for ADF, said in a statement.
Wagner said these cases are indicative of a nationwide trend.
“School districts across the country are increasingly violating parents’ rights by leaving them out of key decisions about their own children,” Wagner said. “More and more, school districts are adopting policies that require school staff to treat children as the opposite sex—in many cases, without parental consent or even notice.
“But the Constitution protects parents’ fundamental right to make decisions about how to care for their children and the right to access information necessary to make such decisions,” he added.
