(LifeSiteNews) — A Wisconsin court agreed Tuesday to block staff at Kettle Moraine School District in Waukesha County from “socially transitioning” gender-confused students without their parents’ knowledge or consent, ruling that doing so was in violation of parental rights.
Since 2021, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) have been representing two sets of area parents against KMSD over school officials treating children as members of the opposite sex without parents’ permission.
One of the families involved said the school actually refused their request to use their daughter’s actual name and female pronouns, resulting in moving the child to a different school and getting her counseling (the girl later came to accept her actual gender).
On Wednesday, a Waukesha County circuit court ruled in favor of the parents, determining that KMSD’s policy “violates parents’ constitutional right to determine the appropriate medical and healthcare for their children,” and enjoining the district “from allowing or requiring staff to refer to students using a name or pronouns at odds with the student’s biological sex, while at school, without express parental consent.”
“The School District could not administer medicine to a student without parental consent,” the court observed. “The School District could not require or allow a student to participate in a sport without parental consent. Likewise, the School District cannot change the pronoun of a student without parental consent without impinging on a fundamental liberty interest of the parents.”
“Parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children is one of the most basic constitutional rights every parent holds dear,” ADF senior counsel Kate Anderson said. “Yet we are seeing more and more school districts across the country not only ignoring parents’ concerns but actively working against them. The court was right to respect the serious concerns of these parents by holding that Kettle Moraine School District’s policy, which undermines parents and harms children, violates the Wisconsin Constitution.”
“This victory represents a major win for parental rights,” WILL deputy counsel Luke Berg agreed. “The court confirmed that parents, not educators or school faculty, have the right to decide whether a social transition is in their own child’s best interests. The decision should be a warning to the many districts across the country with similar policies to exclude parents from gender transitions at school.”
Evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decision.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The danger of keeping parents in the dark about such situations is grimly illustrated in the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself after trying to live as a man for three years.
This summer, another Wisconsin judge ruled differently in another school gender case out of Waukesha County, with Judge Lynn Adelman temporarily forcing Mukwonago Area School District to allow a male student into girls’ restrooms.
