A conservative law firm is highlighting gender ideology in US schools by taking action against many school districts that they say are overstepping the mark regarding parents.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, held a press conference Thursday with clients it represents from across the country who are involved in legal proceedings against their local school districts.
They are supporting a Colorado couple whose 11-year-old daughter was placed in a room with a boy who identified himself as a girl during a school trip to Washington, D.C.
They represent Michigan parents who sued their local school district for using male pronouns for their eighth-grade child without their knowledge.
And they represent a Virginia teacher who claims her school district ordered her to keep students’ gender identity information secret from their parents and others.
“The government is taking decision-making power away from the parents,” Kate Anderson, an attorney involved in the aforementioned cases, warned during the call.
Parents Joe and Serena Wailes are suing Jefferson County Public Schools after their 11-year-old daughter was allegedly forced to sleep in a bed with a biological boy during a Governor’s Ranch Elementary School field trip to Washington, D.C.
“They push decisions that should actually be in the hands of the parents onto themselves, and then they hide that information from the parents. That way they don’t know that the school is making decisions behind their backs, and that’s dangerous.”
“You hear from all of these clients that they are dealing with very dangerous policies that are harmful to the children in their district,” she continued.
Serena Wailes, the mother suing Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for placing a biological boy in the same sleeping situation as her 11-year-old daughter, emphasized how betrayed she felt by her school district.
“We trusted these people,” Serena Wailes told reporters on a phone call.
“They told us throughout the process that boys would be on one floor and girls would be on another. At no point in the process did they say that this would be based on gender identity. So we relied on that.”
“We entrust our children to our school district, but they have failed us.”
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The Littleton family is now demanding that the school (pictured) tell parents in advance what gender their children are expected to share a bed with.
She described her surprise when she heard about her daughter’s situation.
“It was a real shock because I was downstairs in the lobby with the other mothers and then I got a call from our daughter, who was upstairs hiding in the bathroom.”
“Her voice is shaking and she doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of the other kids in her room, but she says, ‘Mom, I don’t feel good about this.'”
“So I had her come down and we went, we talked it over and the chaperone came over, talked it over, and then I found out it was true. And honestly, what I have to say is I feel betrayed.”
Next up were Michigan parents Dan and Jennifer Mead.
They filed a lawsuit against the Rockford Public School District after discovering the school addressed their child with the pronoun “he/him” last year.
Jennifer described how they sought academic help for their daughter through her school counselor and how they began sharing intimate details about the student and her academic and personal life.
“And all the time they were lying to us, changing records. They were calling her by a male name, a male pronoun at school, and then when they would talk to us or send something home, it was always her, you know, they got her first name.”
“It was shocking because we felt like we were being cheated too,” the mother said.
They claim the school secretly “socially transformed” her before her parents knew.
Dan and Jennifer Mead are suing a Michigan public school for unknowingly using male pronouns for their eighth-grade daughter
The lawsuit against the Rockford Public School District alleges that the school violated parents’ rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments
The parents found out in October 2022 when a school psychologist accidentally included the child’s male name in part of a report card sent home.
According to the complaint, the eight-year-old’s name had been changed back to his birth name in the rest of the document.
Finally, a teacher spoke up and shared how she took action against the Harrisonburg City Public School Board in Virginia for allegedly depriving her of the opportunity to talk to parents about their children’s gender identity.
She recognized herself in the parents’ stories and said that as a teacher she has also been a victim of similar policies.
“This policy that I work under misleads parents and harms children,” said Deb Figliola, a high school teacher. “It also requires me to lie.”
Deb Figliola, a teacher in Harrisonburg, Virginia, claims she was asked to lie to parents about their own children
The Virginian described the inner turmoil she felt when she was ordered to keep these important developments secret from the students’ parents.
“That policy meant that if a student came into the building and indicated that they wanted to be identified by a different name and a different pronoun, we always had to acknowledge that,” Figliola said. “And we were never allowed to tell the parents.”
“We’re here for a snapshot. We bring a lot of expertise as teachers, but it’s not enough to make these lifelong decisions,” she said.
“Parents are the ones who are there long after we’re out of the picture, and parents are the ones who were there long before a teacher got involved,” the teacher added.