A woman in Maine named Amber Lavigne is suing school officials for allegedly allowing her 13-year-old daughter to gender transition without her knowledge.
If this is true, it’s easy to understand why she would be outraged.
The Goldwater Institute reports:
Maine Mom Sues School Board for Hiding Child’s ‘Gender Transition’When Maine mom Amber Lavigne found out that her 13-year-old daughter’s public school had kept the child’s “gender transition” a secret and encouraged the middle schooler not to tell her parents, Amber demanded answers. But officials refused to engage in open dialogue, so yesterday the Goldwater Institute filed a federal lawsuit on Amber’s behalf against the Great Salt Bay Community School Board for violating her constitutionally protected parental rights.Amber was alarmed when she came across a chest binder—an undergarment used to flatten breasts—in her daughter’s belongings this past December. She immediately began to investigate where the binder came from, but what the Newcastle mom discovered shocked her: a school social worker who Amber’s daughter began seeing in October gave the child the chest binder and had secretly been advising her about gender transitioning. Making matters worse, the social worker told Amber’s daughter the school wasn’t going to inform her parents about any of it, and that the girl didn’t need to do so either.When Amber contacted school officials, the administrators tried justifying the counselor’s actions. In fact, school personnel had already been referring to Amber’s daughter with a different name and different pronouns, effectively “socially transitioning” her in secret.“This was no accident: my daughter’s public school counselor deliberately tried to keep me in the dark, encouraging my daughter’s gender transition and encouraging her to hide it from me,” Amber says. “When school officials found out, they actually defended the counselor’s actions, trampling on my constitutional rights at every turn. I deserve to know what’s happening to my child—the secrecy needs to stop.”
Lavigne and her lawyer appeared on FOX News in February and claimed that the school board was flippant when confronted.
From FOX News:
On “The Ingraham Angle,” Lavigne told host Laura Ingraham the situation shows that parents are no longer the ultimate arbiters of their children’s lives.”It’s scary, really,” she said. Lavigne’s attorney, Adam Shelton, added parental rights are legally broad and that his organization — the Goldwater Institute — demanded in writing the Great Salt Bay Community School launch a full investigation and change other policies.”[The school must mandate parental notification] whenever the school makes a decision that directly affects the mental health or physical well-being of their children. Parents do have a 14th Amendment right to control and direct the education, upbringing and health care decisions of their children,” Shelton said.Ingraham then played a clip of a recent school board meeting where the incident was brought up to the panel by a concerned parent.”I’m going to ask if you stick to issues at hand and not do speculation around health and well-being at this board meeting. It’s not germane to education,” replied a man identified as School Board Chairman Samuel Belknap.Lavigne called the meeting “pretty disgraceful,” adding that Belknap shrugged his shoulders at any attendee who brought up the incident.
Watch the segment below:
Perhaps this mom should run for a seat on the school board.
Featured image via YouTube.
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