Parents Sue Houston, TX School For ‘Socially-Transitioning’ Their Daughter To The Opposite Sex
Parents say school staff referred to their daughter as a boy, without their notice or consent — and notwithstanding their express objection.
A high school in Houston, Texas, secretly “socially transitioned” one of its students to the opposite sex over her parents’ objections, a federal lawsuit alleges.
The school’s refusal to follow the parents’ instructions regarding their own child was carried out as a matter of official policy, according to the lawsuit. As was also part of that policy, the school neither notified nor sought the consent of the girl’s parents.
In the Houston school system, all a student has to do is ask, and school staff will socially transition them — referring to them with names and pronouns of the opposite sex — behind the parents’ backs, and even against their express instructions, the lawsuit claims.
Houston’s policy mirrors the transgender policies in public schools throughout the country. We’ve covered the ongoing controversy over them here:
- California City Strikes Back at State Law Requiring Schools to Keep Secrets From Parents
- Virginia School Board Agrees To Pay $575K to Teacher Fired for Refusing to Use Trans Student’s Pronouns
- Victory: Ohio School District Will Pay Teacher $450k to Settle Lawsuit Over Transgender Policy
- Appeals Court: Parents Have No Right To Be Told When Their Child ‘Socially Transitions’ Sex In School
- Court Says School Can Secretly “Social-Transition” 12-Year-Old Student To Opposite Sex
- NJ Father Sues State Over Secret Gender Transitioning Policy
- After Male Students Protested To Protect Female Classmates, Pennsylvania High School Nixes Transgender Bathroom Policy
- Groundbreaking Win For Parents: WI State Court Rules Against School’s Secret Gender Transitioning Policy
- Missouri AG Sues School Board Over Secret Transgender Bathroom Policy Meetings
- California Federal Court Says Teachers Don’t Have to Comply With School’s Secret Gender Transitioning Policy
- First Circuit Court of Appeals Hears Oral Argument in School Secret Social Transitioning Case
- California Court Blocks School District’s Gender Notification Policy
- NJ Governor Sues Schools To Halt Parental Notification Of Gender Social Transitioning of Their Kids
- Maryland Parents Can’t Sue School Over Policy On Secret Gender Transitioning, Federal Appeals Court Rules
- Federal Courts Allowing Secret Social Transitioning in Schools, Rebuff Parents’ Rights
What sets this particular case apart from the others is the school’s repeated defiance of the parents’ explicit instructions — oral and written — not to treat their daughter as a boy.
However, unlike in other cases, this wasn’t a situation where the parents came late to the game, finding out only by chance that their child was being “transed.”
Sarah and Terry Osborn knew something was up on the very first day of school, when their daughter’s ninth-grade theater teacher sent her home with a form asking what pronouns to use when referring to her, according to the complaint. The parents say they told the teacher to use female pronouns — and assumed that would be the end of it.
They were wrong. During her sophomore year, the complaint says, members of the school staff, including the same theater teacher, were calling their daughter by a boy’s name and using male pronouns to refer to her. And they did so — the parents discovered in her schoolwork — even after her mother told them to stop.
In a September 24 email to the school, the Osborns made themselves crystal clear.
From the complaint:
WE DEMAND IMMEDIATE NOTIFICATION if [our] child ever expresses a different pronoun, name preference or a different gender from her biological sex, or requests to be treated as any other identity that conflicts with her biological sex.
…
WE DO NOT CONSENT to any manner of [our] child socially transitioning at school. “Social transitioning” involves treating an individual as something other than her biological sex and includes things such as addressing that person by alternative names and/or pronouns not associated with her biological sex.
The school carried on with this charade for at least two years, according to the lawsuit. Finally, after school officials refused the parents’ repeated demands for information about its gender policy — and for assurances it would stop “transing” their daughter — the parents filed a lawsuit in Texas federal district court.
Their lawsuit claims the school’s transgender policy violates their parental and religious rights under the Constitution, as well as their procedural due process rights, insofar as the school made decisions about their daughter’s education and healthcare without their knowledge and consent.
Several courts have rejected similar claims. They’ve held that parental secrecy policies are necessary to promote a “safe and inclusive” learning environment for students. In a recent ruling, a federal court in New York said the school’s transgender policy was “like a civility code that extends the kind of decency students should expect at school.”
However, as the Texas lawsuit sets out, clinical research has shown that secret social transitioning is not just about being polite. It puts emotionally vulnerable children on the path to permanent, life-altering medical transitioning.
Seen this way, it’s a medical intervention — a choice that should require informed consent like any other involving their child, the lawsuit argues. By using a masculine name and incorrect pronouns for their daugher, the parents say the school “engaged in a psychosocial intervention for gender dysphoria,” a health diagnosis school staff were neither qualified to diagnose, nor authorized to treat.
And, as this lawsuit and others have pointed out, it’s a policy absurdly at odds with other school guidance that forbids the school from administering so much as an aspirin without parental consent.
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Comments
My sentiments about the officials approving of this sort of thing involve doing things that would likely get me banned here,
These officials have engaged in child abuse.
Agreed. At minimum the school district should be on the hook financially for any/all future psychological care and medical care arising from their deliberate actions to conceal their sociological and psychological experimentation on this minor child.
Just remember, it’s a crime for you to lie to the police, but perfectly acceptable investigatory policy for them to lie to you.
This sounds a lot like that, doesn’t it?
It’s good ta be da king.
No qualified immunity.
The bong for Jesus case wont protect school officials from qualified immunity. Far too much is known about the dangers of transgenderism for the school officials to claim (or at least successfully claim) that assisting in the social transition was wrong. Including overriding the parents objections.
Its also good that this is filed in federal court and as such the Houston division of the southern district of Texas encompasses 13 counties, so the jury pool will consist of a lot more than just the deep blue harris county.
The school is bat shit crazy but some of this is on the parents for allowing it to continue for at least 2 years and not taking the kid out of that school.
They decided to press the legal point and fight the battle frontally, rather than to retreat and cede the public schools to the enemy. They and their kid took this hit for the rest of us.
The school is a morally corrupt government bureaucracy. Shocking!
The parents are rather slow. They should sue themselves in addition to suing the school.
I hope the young girl does well.
I’m rather shocked at the 3 downvotes. I thought I was in the company of people who believe that adults have moral agency and should be prepared to use it. These parents appear to have left their daughter under the influence of morally corrupt people while they pursued a lengthy lawsuit. Are they foolish enough to think a legal success will change the hearts of these people?
Let’s just say that if this happened to my daughter, I would be sitting in a small concrete cell awaiting execution with the clearest conscience in the history of mankind. Sometimes the legal system is woefully inadequate to mete out justice.
I’m sorry, but at what point do you say enough of this bs and pull your child out of the school? The school is doing something wrong. You know they are doing something wrong. Why continue to expose your child to abuse?
What about the parents that don’t know this is happening? The schools must be forced to cease this insanity to protect children from themselves.
The parents thought that they had handled it. The told the school explicitly, multiple times, in writing, what they wanted in their daughter’s experience. The school hid what they were doing from the parents. How were they to know that the school would disobey the parents’ express wishes?
Once they found out how far the school was willing to go, then the lawsuits started.
you get what you pay for
criminality
Among the most ridiculous, insane, and CRIMINAL court decisions, ever. Any judge who issued these sorts of decisions is a CRIMINAL, plain and simple. This is the abuse of the court in order to advance the deranged perversion of society and it should not be tolerated in any way.
You would think that, AT THE VERY LEAST, a court would find that a school can only operate in secret from the parents (or even more, against the expressed instruction of the parents) if the school got a court order to do so. The idea that a court allows the school (staffed by some of the dumbest and most deranged people in our society) to act as judge and decide, on its own, what parents are worthy of being informed and what parents are worthy of having their children raised as they see fit is absolutely crazy. I think one would be hard pressed to find any other issue for which the school staff is given such total judgment and control. Heck, schools aren’t even allowed to spank students … but they can egg them into cutting their genitals off.
This demented “transition” insanity being pushed on CAPTIVE children is the worst sex crime ever in American history and all of those who have pushed it and helped it proceed (most certainly including the courts and judges who have abused their positions to aid and abet the crime) are criminals of the worst kind and must, at some point, be held liable.
Sue them back to the Stone Age. Only way to make them stop.
I find myself honestly surprised that they haven’t managed to do this to the wrong person’s child. Because I know some people that if this happened they would not Sue that person. They would get a shotgun
I would feed them to the hogs, alive.
one day someone is going to talk to the principal and school board in a manner they wont like and the police will actually take the side of the taxpayers
HAH! HAH! HAH I say! Police take orders and will not go against their masters.
Reason number (insert absurdly large number) to abolish government “schools”.
Why is this so hard?
Strangers –and that’s what teachers and school administrators are– don’t get to be ‘safe and inclusive’ with the sexuality of other people’s children.