A federal appeals court ruled this week that a group of Montgomery County parents do not have standing to challenge the local public school system’s gender guidelines, which allow students to confidentially explore their gender identity at school.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the parents’ lawsuit against the Montgomery County Board of Education on Monday.
“The parents have not alleged that their children have gender support plans, are transgender or are even struggling with issues of gender identity,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr. wrote for the majority. “Thus, under the Constitution, they have not alleged the type of injury required to show standing.”
The lawsuit stemmed from a set of “Guidelines for Gender Identity” that the school board adopted ahead of the 2020-2021 school year, according to court records.
The guidelines allow school officials to develop gender support plans so that individual students can express their gender identity at school.
The plans address the student’s preferred name, pronouns, and bathroom or locker room space; it also assesses whether the student’s family is supportive of their gender identity and allows school officials to withhold information if the family is not supportive.
Three parents sued over the policy in 2020, alleging that the guidelines interfered with a fundamental right to raise their children as they see fit. The parents claimed that under the policy, the school system has withheld information about more than 300 gender support plans from students’ parents.
In his majority opinion, Quattlebaum acknowledged that the policy is contentious, but concluded that the parents must take their complaints to the ballot box if they want the school board to make changes.
“Simply put, the parents may think the Parental Preclusion Policy is a horrible idea,” Quattlebaum wrote. “They may think it represents an overreach into areas that parents should handle. They may think that the Board’s views on gender identity conflict with the values they wish to instill in their children. And in all those areas, they may be right. But even so, they have alleged neither a current injury, nor an impending injury or a substantial risk of future injury.”
Judge Paul V. Niemeyer dissented and criticized the majority for ignoring the heart of the parents’ complaint: that the gender guidelines take away parents’ ability to make choices about what is best for their children.
The parents should not have to wait until they learn their child is participating in a gender support plan to sue over the school systems’ policy, Niemeyer wrote.
“They are not complaining in the abstract about the ideology of the Board’s policy; they are complaining that the policy is actually interfering with the parent-child relationship and that their own children are forcefully being subjected to it,” the judge wrote.
Frederick W. Claybrook Jr., a lawyer for the parents, said in an email that the group is “actively considering next steps in the legal process.”
“We agree with the analysis of the dissenting judge that parents have a right to complain about this school policy because it allows the school to keep secret from parents how it is treating their child at school and that such policies violate parental rights,” he said. “Parents do not have to wait until they find out that damage has been done in secret before they may complain.”
A spokesperson for Montgomery County Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
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August 16, 2023 at 02:14AM
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Parents lose challenge to gender guidelines at Montgomery County public schools - Maryland Daily Record
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