A Wisconsin school district is facing a complaint over a policy that keeps parents in the dark when their child identifies as the opposite sex at school.
Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) should lose federal funding if the district does not change its policy in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” several organizations that advocate for parental rights told Education Secretary Linda McMahaon and Attorney General Pam Bondi in a complaint sent Wednesday.
“The Department should also require MPS to notify the parents of any child for whom MPS maintains a secret gender support plan without the parents’ awareness,” the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and Parents Defending Education (PDE) argue in the complaint.
The district’s policy instructing staff to label gender-related information as “confidential” and to remove it from students’ official record violates federal law, the groups allege, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).
Forms that staff fill out in connection with the district’s “Gender Inclusion Guidance” ask if the student’s parents are “aware and supportive” of their child’s gender. If the parents are not supportive, it asks how “school-home communications” should be handled.
“This is such an important issue that we’re seeing in school districts across the country,” ADF senior counsel Kate Anderson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s a lot of litigation on it because it’s really hurting kids. Kids need their parents, especially when they’re struggling with something as complicated as their identity. They need their parents to walk alongside them.”
Anderson explained that the federal government can open investigations and pull funding from schools whose policies don’t comply with statutes like FERPA and PPRA.
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) launched an investigation into California’s Department of Education March 27 over a state law that prohibits schools from informing parents of their child’s “gender identity,” alleging it violates FERPA. The DOE is also investigating Maine over policies that do not notify parents when their child is identifying as the opposite sex at school, the department announced Friday.
READ:
Complaint Against the Milwaukee Public School District (MPS) for Violations of FERPA and the PPRA by Katelynn Richardson
Several lawsuits, including ones brought by ADF in Michigan and New York, have been filed over similar policies nationwide.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld one Massachusetts school district’s policy in February, finding “parental rights are not unlimited.” In December, the Supreme Court declined to take a case involving another Wisconsin school district with a policy that secretly encouraged gender transitions.
“As you may be aware, over a thousand school districts around the country have adopted policies to hide gender transitions at school from parents,” the complaint states. “Like many of these policies, MPS’s ‘Gender Inclusion Guidance’ provides that students, of any age, are ‘entitled to be addressed by an affirmed name and pronoun(s) of their choice that correspond to their gender identity,’ without notice to or permission from the parents.’”
“Indeed, the guidance warns ‘school personnel [to] be mindful not to reveal, imply, or refer to a student’s actual or perceived gender identity or gender expression when contacting parents/guardians when formal changes to official records have not been made,’” it continues.
WILL Deputy Counsel Luke Berg said in a statement to the DCNF that parents “have the right and solemn responsibility to raise their own children.”
“Federal law recognizes the parental role, yet school districts around the country have been flouting parental rights,” he said. “With a new administration that supports parents, we hope that these secret transition policies can be eliminated once and for all.”
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