An affluent New Jersey school district is facing a lawsuit over a policy that reportedly allows students to change their names and gender identities in school records without notifying their parents.
The Chathams School District policy has drawn controversy because it also permits students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity while parents remain unaware, according to NJ.com.
Under the directive, the district’s guidance counselors are reportedly given discretion to determine “whether, and to what extent” parents should be informed about a student’s gender identity at school.
Tina Descovich, the CEO and founder of Moms for Liberty, one of the plaintiffs in the case, sharply criticized the policy in comments to Fox News Digital. “They have a policy in the school district that will actually punish children that don’t use the demanded new gender identity pronoun and name of another student,” she said.
Descovich argued that classmates could face serious discipline even for a mistake. “They can do that just one time on accident, and they can be punished up to suspension just for using the wrong pronoun or the wrong name of someone that is identifying as something other than they actually are,” she said.
Moms for Liberty is joined in the lawsuit by Moms for America and two anonymous parents of elementary-school-age girls. The complaint alleges that the Chathams School District policy violates parents’ constitutional due-process rights under the 14th Amendment.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 24, follows the US Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, which granted an injunction against California policies that kept students’ gender identities confidential from their parents.
The Supreme Court, however, has not issued a ruling on the merits of those policies.
“The court has made clear in the Mirabelli case, and the Third Circuit has a decision along the same lines, that parents have standing to challenge a policy like this,” said Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society representing the plaintiffs, to Fox.
“The policy provides that this information will be hidden from them, so [parents] have the right to object to it, whether or not their particular child or children is at that moment being transitioned.
“And there’s always a risk, of course, that the child under peer pressure, or the influence of teachers, or social media, will go along with this ridiculous trend and decide that his gender is not the biological one that parents believe is God-given and immutable but some other gender,” the lawyer said.
The New Jersey school district — one of the Garden State’s richest and highest-performing — has pushed back on the notion that it is legally bound by the Mirabelli decision.
At a school-board meeting in June, board President Ann Ciccareli said the district is required to follow the state’s Law Against Discrimination, which permits the policy, as well as state Education Department 2018 guidance on transgender students.
New Jersey Attorney General Mathew Platkin has acknowledged that the state guidance is not mandatory, according to NJ.com.
