The case involves an 11-year-old girl.
Supreme Court justices on April 20 declined to take up a case involving a Massachusetts schoolgirl whose parents say officials wrongly hid their daughter’s purported identity as a male from them.
At least six of the nine justices declined to accept a petition to rehear a lower court verdict in the case, which was brought by the girl’s parents in 2022 against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school district.
The vote count on the petition and how each justice voted were not disclosed, nor were any comments offered by the justices.
“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, who was helping represent the parents, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Social transition, including going by inaccurate or nonbinary pronouns and a different name, is a major intervention in a child’s life that puts the child on a difficult-to-escape pathway to medicalized transition, carrying the risk of life-altering damage. No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children.”
An attorney representing the school officials did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.
The parents said that Ludlow Public Schools secretly encouraged students to state their gender identity and, through other measures, promoted transgenerism. Officials facilitated the purported transition of their daughter, who is referred to as B.F. in court papers, to male, or “nonbinary,” without letting her parents know, according to court documents.
“The school treated B.F. as though she were nonbinary, authorized her to use opposite-sex facilities, conducted regular private counseling sessions, and participated in her gender transition,” lawyers for the parents told the Supreme Court in a brief.
“That led B.F. to question the suitability of her parents’ care plan—all without her parents’ knowledge. After discovering the school’s actions, Petitioners demanded that officials stop. But the school doubled down, claiming parental knowledge and involvement compromises their daughter’s safety.”
The parents said that what happened violated their constitutional rights.
