Appeals court ruling denies parents’ rights to be informed by school about 11-year-old child’s gender change

Parental rights were dealt a blow in a ruling from an appeals court that said schools didn’t have to notify parents when their 11-year-old child said the child was changing gender.

The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling from 2022 by U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni and dismissed the appeal filed by parents of a student at Ludlow Public Schools in Massachusetts.

The school argued that their gender protocols were appropriate in order to ‘ensure a safe and inclusive school learning environment for students.’

Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri filed the lawsuit against the Ludlow school and several officials after the school encouraged their daughter to use new pronouns and a new name without their consent, as previously reported by Blaze News.

The parents had been informed by school officials in Dec. 2022 that their daughter had expressed feelings of depression and poor self-image as well as same-sex attraction. The parents thanked the officials and sought therapy for their daughter.

The parents also emailed teachers to request that they not discuss the matter further with their daughter, but the lawsuit claims that teachers ignored their directive and used her changed name while counseling her on gender change. After the girl emailed teachers requesting they use new pronouns for her, school officials refused to inform the parents and also prevented them from directing the mental health of their daughter.

The decision was based on Ludlow schools following an order issued in 2012 by the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to avoid discrimination on the basis of gender.

The school argued that its gender protocols were appropriate in order to “ensure a safe and inclusive school learning environment for students.”

Bizarrely, the appeals court compared gender choice to career choice in its ruling.

“Providing educational resources about LGBTQ-related issues to a child who has shown interest imposes no more compulsion to identify as genderqueer than providing a book about brick laying could coerce a student into becoming a mason,” the court said.

Both courts found that the school’s actions did not infringe on the parents’ constitutional rights to direct their child’s mental health.

“We acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child’s life — including their socialization, education, and health,” read the ruling. “Parents may not invoke the Due Process Clause to create a preferred educational experience for their child in public school.”

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