Wisconsin Supreme Court rules against a parent’s right to know if their child identifies as transgender
In a 5-4 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled last week against a parent’s right to know if their child identifies as transgender, choosing instead to allow the Madison Metropolitan School District to keep this information secret.
The lawsuit was launched by parents when the school district launched a round of pro-LGBT policies promoting the indoctrination of children into the transgender lifestyle without parental involvement (via WNG.org):
A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday turned back a court challenge by parents who wish to be informed when their child wants to identify as the opposite sex.
The lawsuit centers on a Madison, Wis., school district policy that requires schoolteachers and administrators to refer to students by their preferred name and pronouns regardless of whether parents have given permission. The policy also bars disclosure of students’ chosen pronouns and gender identity to parents.
In its 5-4 ruling, the justices affirmed a lower court ruling that required the parents, who had asked to proceed under pseudonyms, to disclose their names to the court and to law firms representing the school district. A lower court agreed with parents that disclosure of their names could expose them to a substantial risk of threats and harassment. But it said they could share their names with the attorneys on the case, and the court would order them to keep the parents’ identities confidential.
The Supreme Court majority also refused a request for a temporary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement.
“Today, parents’ constitutional rights, the high burden of proof required to intervene in parents’ parenting decisions, and the presumption that parents act in the best interests of their children are all upended by the majority opinion’s silence,” Justice Patience Drake Roggensack wrote in the dissenting opinion. (Emphasis mine)
This decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court — Wisconsin is a so-called “red” state, by the way — carries repercussions beyond the Madison Metropolitan School District. It will likely impact the whole state.
For example, a little over two hours northwest of Madison is where you’ll find the Eau Claire Area School District where teachers recently received pro-transgender training that embraces gender identity, safe spaces, and equity. Teachers were taught to prioritize indoctrinating children into transgenderism and to keep parents from knowing if their child claims to be transgender because, according to the training materials, parents are “not entitled to know” such things about their children.
A report by Parents Defending Education provided material obtained from concerned community that clearly spelled this out:
Hosts of the pro-transgender training praised other states where mandates requiring schools to teach pro-LGBT topics in classrooms from kindergarten through high school have been enacted while simultaneously condemning the majority of states that have no such mandates. The hosts then pushed for mandates teaching “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in public schools.
Participants were encouraged to discuss the importance of teachers gaining trust with “LGBTQ+ youth” and how to “strategize the support of LGBTQ+ students without the support of their parents.” One of the hosts said parents who reject their child’s claim of being transgender of “abuse”:
We understand and acknowledge that teachers are often put in terrible positions caught between parents and their students. But much like we wouldn’t act as stand-ins for abuse in other circumstances, we cannot let parents’ rejection of their children guide teachers’ reactions and actions and advocacy for our students. (Emphasis mine)
The training concluded with the following guidance:
- Use whichever terminology an individual prefers (e.g., identity, pronouns, name, etc.). It isn’t up to you who someone else is.
- Reach out for additional information; there are OODLES of resources out there!
- Do not ask someone about their genitals. Just don’t. Rude.
- Do not ask about someone’s deadname.
- Remember: Sexual orientation, gender identity, and assigned sex are not choices we make. We do, however, choose how to react to difference.
The instructor’s claim of child abuse is rather ironic, considering the March 2016 statement issued by the American College of Pediatricians that called transgenderism, at best, a sign of “confused thinking” and not a “genetic marker of a [biological] disorder.” The statement described such thinking as a problem that exists in the mind and not the body and that “it should be treated as such,” and it concluded:
“Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”
Using the public school system to spread the transgender lie and the subsequent child abuse has been brewing ever since the early days of the Obama administration, and things could soon reach the boiling point under Joe Biden.
Like Obama before him, Joe Biden has taken many of the same steps to advance the transgender lie, including the use of the Department of Education (DOE) to indoctrinate children. This is the reason he chose Catherine Lhamon — who once served under Obama as assistant secretary for civil rights and as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights — to be the assistant secretary for civil rights at DOE.
Lhamon became well known for being an anti-religious liberty extremist on LGBT issues while working for Obama. While working for the “First Gay President,” Lhamon wrote a letter telling public schools they were in violation of federal law if they prohibited transgender-identifying students from using the restroom or locker room that matched their gender identity or playing on the gender-specific sports team of their choosing based on the “Obama rule.”
“A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” she wrote at the time.
Biden began laying the groundwork for turning public schools into transgender indoctrination centers in May 2021 when he announced plans to use the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Education to expand the definition of the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs to include gender identity in order to force public and private schools to comply. States that fail to do as he wishes will be taken to court.
Biden also intends to make Title IX policy changes to ensure “equal protections” for transgender students — including their “right” to access school bathrooms that match their gender identity and participate in school sports. Title IX protects students and school faculty from discrimination based on sex in education programs that receive federal financial assistance, and it’s enforced by the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights, where Catherine Lhamon now resides as assistant secretary.
Biden’s transgender agenda recently received a boost when a group of House Democrats introduced a “Transgender Bill of Rights” to move the LGBT agenda one step closer to becoming the law of the land.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that the Madison Metropolitan School District — and pretty much the rest of the state’s public schools — can be used as indoctrination centers for the pro-LGBT transgender agenda, and that parents have no right to know or do anything about it.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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