Parents of a child whose school secretly facilitated her social transition from female to male are waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court will take up their case against the school.

Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Child & Parental Rights Campaign, are appealing a decision of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in late February that “parental rights are not unlimited.”

Foote and Silvestri’s daughter attended Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts. During her time there, Foote and Silvestri discovered the 11-year-old was depressed and questioning her gender identity. They hired a private counselor and requested that the school officials refrain from speaking with her about such matters in private conversations.

However, the school continued to secretly facilitate the student’s social gender transition by calling her by a male name and nonbinary pronouns. The school counselor provided LGBTQ resources and permitted her to use male-designated bathrooms. Staff were instructed not to disclose the use of her male name to the student’s parents. However, the parents discovered the school’s actions after a private conversation with a teacher. The teacher disclosed to the parents that their child had announced she was “genderqueer” to school staff. The school fired the teacher after discovering her conversation.  

John Bursch, ADF senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy, addressed Baird Middle School’s social transition policy and the school’s violation of parental rights in a press release. 

“[T]he Ludlow School Committee has not only enacted a secret social transition policy that keeps parents completely in the dark about their kids,” Bursch said, “they also blatantly go against parents’ express wishes.”

In April 2022, Foote and Silvestri filed suit against the school, claiming that the school violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

After a U.S. district court dismissed the case, the parents appealed to the 1stCircuit Court of Appeals, which also dismissed it, stating, “Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student’s at-school gender expression without the student’s consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized as a violation of the guarantees of substantive due process.”

ADF and the Child & Parental Rights Campaign petitioned the Supreme Court to hear their case, ADF recently announced.

“Parents across the country need this Court’s swift intervention,” the petition states, “lest schools continue to mold their children’s sexual identity without parental input. There’s no time to waste.”

Bursch affirmed that the Constitution protects Foote and Silvestri from the school’s actions.

“Mr. Foote and Ms. Silvestri have a moral belief, backed by well-supported scientific opinion, that a so-called gender transition harms children,” he said. “ … We are urging the Supreme Court to take this case and affirm the constitutional protections parents have in making the best decisions for their children.”

The petition also notes that “More than 1,000 public school districts have adopted secret transition policies, resulting in dozens of lawsuits and harming countless children.”

According to a Parents Defending Education report, almost 1,200 school districts in the U.S., which educate over 12.3 million children, bar school faculty and staff from notifying parents about their children’s social gender transition in schools.

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