A Minnesota mother has asked the Supreme Court to review her case against county health officials after they gave her teenage son “life-changing” gender transition treatments over her objections.
Anmarie Calgaro, represented by lawyers from the Thomas More Society, contends in a petition filed Wednesday with the high court that her constitutional rights as a parent were violated, first by public school officials, and then by St. Louis County, Minnesota, officials who considered her then 16-year-old son “emancipated” without a court order or parental notice. The Thomas More Society says her son was “shepherded through the process of pursuing a sex change by county officials without her consent.”
Calgaro has lost on appeal twice, first in federal district court and then, in March, at the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Calgaro’s son, a week before his 15thbirthday, obtained a non-notarized “emancipation” letter with no court order or parental input from a Minnesota legal aid organization that was then accepted by public school officials, and by county health officials after he turned 16 to begin his gender transition treatments.
Her son is no longer a minor, but Calgaro’s attorneys say Minnesota law, which allows emancipation of minors in certain conditions, provides no process of appeal for parents who are deemed “fit” by the courts, a violation of constitutional “due process” provisions, they argue.
“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Thomas More Society lawyer Eric Kaardal said in a statement. “Anmarie Calgaro’s child, while a minor, was steered through a life-changing, permanent body-altering process, becoming a pawn in someone else’s sociopolitical agenda and being influenced by those who have no legal or moral right to usurp the role of a parent.
“The U.S. Court of Appeals ignored the major disconnect in the District Court decision where the mother’s parental rights are admitted but not honored, and the ridiculous claims that the agencies which have violated Calgaro’s rights did nothing wrong,” Kaardal stated.
“The United States Supreme Court now has the opportunity to untangle this untenable scenario; so, nationwide, fit parents can keep parenting without governmental interference.”