A high school in Houston, Texas, sued by parents for secretly “socially transitioning” their daughter to the opposite sex, has agreed not to treat their daughter as a boy, according to a settlement filed on Friday.
In their federal lawsuit, Sarah and Terry Osborn claimed school staff referred to their daughter with a masculine name and pronouns behind their backs—even after they objected.
We covered the case, Osborn v. Houston Independent School District, here.
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 court filing. As was also part of that policy, the school neither notified nor sought the consent of the girl’s parents.
Houston’s policy mirrors the transgender protocols in public schools throughout the country: 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, without the parents’ knowledge or consent.
The lawsuit, and now its resolution, came after over two years during which the parents say the school repeatedly defied their explicit instructions — oral and written — not to treat their daughter as a boy.
Unlike other cases we’ve covered, this wasn’t a situation where the parents came late to the game, finding out only by chance that their child was being “transed.”
The Osborns 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 lawsuit said 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.
The school continued this charade for at least two years, the parents claimed. Finally, after school officials refused their 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.
The parents claimed the school’s transgender policy violated 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.
Although the Osborns originally asked the court to declare the Houston policy unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to them, under the settlement reached last week, they agreed to drop all their claims against the school. The school, in return, will direct its staff to address the Osborn’s daughter only by her given name and by female pronouns—just as her parents told them to do on the first day of school.
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