Teachers at a school in Wisconsin chose to support a transgender student and use the appropriate he/him/his pronouns. Then his parents decided to pull him from the school.
Now they and another set of parents are suing the Kettle Moraine School District in suburban Milwaukee. They're accusing the school of taking away their rights as parents by not enforcing the parents' chosen gender for their children and instead affirming their children's own gender identity.
The known hate groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty have filed the lawsuit in a state court on behalf of the two sets of parents.
The lawsuit claims parents have a right "to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control," based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution. However, those documents do not state the parent's right specifically.
The lawsuit also claims using pronouns a person asks for is "medical treatment" for gender dysphoria. They believe the school has no "expertise" in social transition and thus it should be up to the parents to determine what pronouns their child is allowed to use.
The lawsuit also states the gender identity of a child is a matter of the parents' "own system of beliefs."
The first set of parents learned their 12-year-old child began to identify as a boy so they took him out of school to put him in a mental health center. The parents were horrified when the people at the health center also affirmed their child's identity as a boy.
The lawsuit states the parents did "extensive research into this issue" and determined they needed their son "to take time to explore the cause of [his] feelings" despite the evaluation at the mental health center.
Extensive research has been done on the mental health benefits of affirming transgender children's identities. It improves their wellbeing. But the parents' lawsuit instead claims respecting the child's identity makes the child trans.
The lawsuit misgendered the child throughout the document.
The parents called the school and told them to use the incorrect pronouns and name for their child, but the principal refused to do so. He stated it is a school policy to respect their students' gender identity.
The parents pulled their son out of school and searched for a therapist that would reject his gender identity. During that time, his parents claim he "changed [his] mind" about his identity, which they say proves they were right all along.
The other parents that joined the lawsuit say their two kids do not identify as transgender but fear the school would affirm their gender if they did start identifying differently.
The far-right group Alliance Defending Freedom has been the driving force behind the anti-trans hate machine. There was a wave of anti-trans sports bills that swept the nation in the legislative session earlier this year. The group also was the driving force behind Idaho's HB 500 that actually banned transgender women from participating in sports.
Several bills attempted to ban affirming medical and mental health treatment for transgender youth. One even attempted to label gender affirming care from parents as "abuse."
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So far there has been no comment from the school about the lawsuit.
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