Can a Public School Help a Young Girl Change Her Sexual Identity — and Not Tell Her Parents?
It's a question the Supreme Court may have to decide.
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If a 13-year old girl, enrolled in a public school, wants to be referred to as he and him, and wants to alter her appearance to look more like a boy than a girl … does her mother have a right to know what’s going at that school when it comes to her child?
That’s not a hypothetical question. In Maine, that’s precisely what happened.
“While cleaning her 13-year-old daughter’s room in 2022, Amber Lavigne found a chest binder. A social worker at the eighth-grader’s school in Maine had given the child the device, which flattens breasts to facilitate a masculine appearance. Unbeknownst to Lavigne, at school her daughter was using masculine pronouns.” That, from a column by George Will.
The girls’ mother confronted school officials — and was told that the school counselor did nothing wrong. So she sued the school board for violating her rights as a parent — and lost twice (on technical grounds) in federal court. Now she wants the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
“This was no accident: my daughter’s public school counselor deliberately tried to keep me in the dark, encouraging my daughter’s gender transition and encouraging her to hide it from me,” Amber Lavigne says. “When school officials found out, they actually defended the counselor’s actions, trampling on my constitutional rights at every turn. I deserve to know what’s happening to my child — the secrecy needs to stop.”
