A Wisconsin judge ruled against a school district’s policy of adopting students’ preferred pronouns and names without obtaining parental consent, a decision cheered as a “groundbreaking legal win” for parents’ rights.  Good!

     Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell granted summary judgment to parents who sued the Kettle Moraine School District in southeastern Wisconsin, finding the district violated the rights of parents to make medical decisions on behalf of their children.  “The School District could not administer medicine to a student without parental consent,” said Judge Maxwell in the 19-page opinion. “The School District could not require or allow a student to participate in a sport without parental consent. Likewise, the School District cannot change the pronoun of a student without parental consent without impinging on a fundamental liberty interest of the parents.”

     Attorneys for the two families that filed the 2021 lawsuit described the ruling as a pivotal victory for parents’ rights as school districts across the nation adopt policies allowing children to undergo social transitions without their parents’ knowledge or permission.  “This victory represents a major win for parental rights,” said Luke Berg, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in Milwaukee.  Teachers and staffers have sued in recent years over being required to use preferred pronouns or conceal students’ social transitions from parents, but the institute called the Wisconsin ruling “groundbreaking” and a “first-of-its-kind win against a school’s gender-transition policy to circumvent parents.”

     “The court confirmed that parents, not educators or school faculty, have the right to decide whether a social transition is in their own child’s best interests,” Mr. Berg said. “The decision should be a warning to the many districts across the country with similar policies to exclude parents from gender transitions at school.”