286

Religious parents sue school district for respecting their child's gender identity - LGBTQ Nation (www.lgbtqnation.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Sunflier@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Two religious parents filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Anne Arundel County Public School District of Maryland for allegedly “socially transitioning” their child with a masculine name and pronouns without notifying them.

The parents, identified in court documents only as John and Jane Doe, are being represented by America First Legal (AFL), an anti-LGBTQ+ conservative legal organization. The parents want school officials to start misgendering their child and for the judge to declare the school district’s trans-inclusive name and pronoun policies as illegal. The school district has declined to comment on the case.

The lawsuit, filed in Maryland’s U.S. District Court, says the school began referring to the child with a masculine name and pronouns at the beginning of the school year at the student’s request. The parents only became aware of this last December 10 when the school emailed the parents about a lab experiment happening in class the next day. The email used a male name to refer to their child, The Baltimore Banner reported.

The staff member who sent the email reportedly tried to unsend it and then sent the parents a message saying that the email wasn’t intended to go to them, the lawsuit said. The following day, the parents allegedly spoke to the staff member who “admitted to lying in the emails” and informed the parents that their child had requested the masculine name and pronouns, the lawsuit adds.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Legally, the school is acting in loco parentis, granting it the necessary discretion to decide what is best for the students' well being while school is in session. As long as the students' civil rights are respected by the school, the school is well within their rights to perform parental functions. Also, social and emotional learning are part of the curriculum everywhere. Education has functions beyond rote learning, which is what makes us a society and not just a chaotic mass of tribes and individuals.

This is a very basic tenet of the social contract with regard to public schooling. The education system houses all the necessary expertise and pedagogical know-how to educate at scale. (Most parents are not experts in pedagogy, social/emotional learning, etc.) They are making this expertise available, FOR FREE (through taxes), to all children inside the borders of this country. In return, individual educators, departments, and schools reserve the right to decide how best to apply that expertise.

If parents disagree with that, if they are uncomfortable with that and they want more control, etc... that's fine! What you don't get to do, is fundamentally break the public system - for my kids and everyone else - just because you as a parent don't like the fact that public school teachers are honoring your child's humanity, civil rights, and teaching them to treat others the same. That's anti-social behavior.

You are free to opt out of the public system entirely, forfeit its benefits, and either send your kids to a private school of your choosing, start your own private school, or homeschool your children. At your own expense. We all collectively pay taxes to subsidize real education in public schools, not the ideological whims and misadventures of rogue individuals, who have their own ideas about education. We know better.

this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026

286 points (97.7% liked)

News

38357 readers

2041 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.

Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.

7. No duplicate posts.

If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.

All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

JonsJava@lemmy.world

gedaliyah@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world