Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) joined a United States Supreme Court amicus brief of fifty organizations supporting the petition of Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, a case brought on behalf of parents against a school district that secretly transitioned their daughter’s gender despite their clear directives not to do so.
When Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri learned that their 11-year-old daughter was struggling with mental health and questioning her sex, they hired a therapist and directed their Ludlow, Massachusetts school district not to have private conversations with their daughter about her mental health. In defiance of their wishes, and ignoring their parental rights, the school district secretly met with their daughter regularly and encouraged her to transition to a new name, new pronouns, and to use the boys’ bathrooms. The school also instructed staff not to tell the parents any of this information, and when a teacher finally did so, the school district fired her. And when Foote and Silvestri complained about the school district’s actions, the district suggested that they were bigots.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the school district, determining that parental rights are diminished when it comes to “administrative matters” in public schools. Now, they are appealing to the United States Supreme Court to affirm that parents have a fundamental and longstanding right to direct the upbringing of their children.
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SLF joined a coalition of fifty organizations in urging the Supreme Court to take up this case. They explain that just recently, the Court recognized in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have the fundamental right to raise their children consistent with their beliefs. They write, “Parental authority has long been recognized as the first form of government because it is ‘the most Sacred and Ancient Kind of Authority.’” Given that parental rights have been recognized since even before the Constitution was established, schools should not be in the business of taking drastic measures like transitioning a child’s gender without express parental consent.