MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Kettle Moraine Middle School: Parents sue district after school supports trans son's identity

Parents are suing the Kettle Moraine School District in suburban Milwaukee after alleging that the said school violated their parental rights

A Wisconsin school district is being sued by two angry sets of parents after Kettle Moraine Middle School said that they were going to support a trans boy and refer to him with he/him pronouns.

Parents are suing the Kettle Moraine School District in suburban Milwaukee after alleging that the said school violated their parental rights by affirming their child's gender identity. The group Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a lawsuit in a state court on behalf of the two sets of parents. According to the lawsuit, the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Article 1, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution protects the rights of parents “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. It is important to note that neither document mentions parents’ rights specifically.

READ MORE

What is Policy 8040? School board meeting over new trans rules ends in parents' arrests

JK Rowling names and shames trans activists who doxed her amid spate of death threats

The lawsuit also alleges that schools referring to transgender students with the correct pronouns is a form of 'medical treatment' and hence they have to seek the permission of the parents first before determining what kind of treatment the students should go through. The gender identity of a child is a matter of the parents’ “own system of beliefs," states the suit.

Why are the parents suing the school?

In the case of the first set of parents, they pulled their trans child out of school after the 12-year-old child started identifying as a boy, and instead, admitted him to a mental health center. The parents insisted that their son is a girl because that was his sex assigned at birth. However, the mental health center affirmed the boy’s identity as a boy. The lawsuit refers to their son with she/her pronouns and insists that the parents have done “extensive research into this issue” which showed them that their son needed “to take time to explore the cause of [his] feelings,” despite the evaluation at the mental health center. If their son's gender was being affirmed, he could not explore his feelings, the parents said. 

The parents said that they called up the school and told the principal that their son was to be referred to with she/her pronouns as his birth certificate said. Since the district’s policy is to respect a student’s gender identity and the student insisted that he is a boy, the principal said that they could not agree to the parents' request. This made the parents pull their son out of school and seek a therapist who would reject their son’s gender identity. They also claim that during the time that their son spent at home and was not allowed to go to school, he “changed [his] mind” about his gender identity on his own which meant they were proven correct.  

The second set of parents, who have two children in the district, did not say that their kids are transgender. They said that they were just joining the lawsuit because they were scared that the school might start affirming their children’s gender identities if they are transgender. 

'Parents clearly don’t understand the science behind gender'

Twitter users have been responding to this. One of them said, "I don't think that's in the bill of rights." Another commented, "That poor kid needs a decent set of parents. What vile humans." A third wrote, "To clarify, the parents are suing because THE SCHOOL ACKNOWLEDGED AND SUPPORTED THE CHILD'S GENDER IDENTITY. The parents did not." The next remarked, "Parents pull their trans son out of school & sue because the staff used he/him pronouns I... I don’t even know where to begin. This is horrific."

One more wrote, "My blood boils for that poor boy. I can’t imagine the fear and the anxiety someone so young must be going through in that situation." Another noted, "Hmm wonder why he didn’t want to tell his parents /s." A commenter tweeted, "'Direct the upbringing and education of children under their control'  Did they mean to say 'in their care'? Or are they just saying the quiet bit out loud?" A person reacted with, "Parents clearly don’t understand the science behind gender."