The mother of a transgender student athlete has petitioned Hennepin County District Court to seal all court records regarding changes to her child’s legal name and birth certificate.
In June of 2017, Heather Rothenberger filed to have her child’s name changed from Charlie Dean to Marissa Dannielle and requested that the child’s birth certificate be changed to female. Less than three weeks later, a judge granted the name change and ordered the birth certificate change. Charlie was just nine-years-old at the time.
Since then, Marissa has competed on Champlin Park’s girls high school softball team and dominated the competition. Alpha News reported that the Champlin Park girls softball team won a state championship earlier this month on the strength of Marissa’s pitching.
In the championship game, Marissa pitched a shutout en route to a 6-0 win over the Bloomington Jefferson Jaguars. Prior to that, Marissa pitched a series of shutouts in the state softball tournament, knocking off the defending state champions in the process.
Now, Heather Rothenberger is requesting that all court records regarding her child’s name change and birth certificate alteration be made private. In a court filing submitted Tuesday, Rothenberger wrote that her child “is a transgender girl, has openly identified as female, and has used she/her pronouns since 2012.”
Additionally, Rothenberger said she believed court records regarding the name change were private, but recently learned they are not. In turn, the mother wrote that “sealing Marissa’s name change and gender marker correction from the public is critical to protecting her safety–both physically and mentally.”
In her court filing, Rothenberger says her child was “outed as trans” and conservative news organizations have “since taken up the story, leading to vicious coverage of Marissa in the press. As a result, Marissa and our family have received a host of harassing comments in person and online.”
The mother said “the harassment has been so severe that Marissa has been bullied out of continuing softball in future seasons.” Rothenberger also said her child’s school has fielded a high volume of phone calls about the matter, their family life has been severely disrupted by the situation, and she fears for her child’s safety.
Court documents show that Rothenberger and her legal team have requested an expedited ruling “to mitigate as much of the danger as possible.”
Further, a legal brief submitted by Rothenberger’s lawyer argues that the records should be sealed because “the public has no interest in the minor child’s dead name or sex assigned at birth,” “the minor child needs this Court record sealed to protect her safety and privacy,” and “the minor child has a constitutional right to keep her name change and sex assigned at birth private.”
Alpha News reached out to Rothenberger’s attorney for this story but did not immediately receive a response.
Last month, a group of Minnesota high school softball players sued Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota State High School League for being forced to compete against biological males.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
