Last week, we received word that the First Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against our clients in Foote v. Town of Ludlow. We filed this case in 2022 and serve as local counsel alongside attorneys from the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. 

In this case, Ludlow Public Schools pushed a 12-year-old female student to identify as transgender and deliberately withheld from her parents that she had started using a male name and pronouns. While they used this new male name and pronouns for the student at school, they used her birth name and pronouns when they spoke with the parents in an attempt to hide the student’s gender transition from them. When the parents found out and demanded that the school respect their wishes and stop using the male name and pronouns, the school refused and continued to socially transition their daughter to the opposite gender without their consent.   

The school’s conduct was a clear and egregious violation of the parents’ fundamental rights to raise their child. But the First Circuit’s decision twisted the facts and stretched the law to hold that the school did nothing wrong. Instead, the court held that the parents had no right to interfere with the “administrative decision” of how the school would address students. It claimed that the school had not really deceived the parents because it never lied to them outright about their child’s gender identity. And it framed the name and pronoun usage not as a mental health intervention designed to facilitate the 12-year-old student’s gender transition, but as simply a respectful and courteous response to her request to identify as a boy.

This decision tramples on parents’ rights and, as our colleagues at Child and Parental Rights Campaign have stated, it cannot stand. We will be filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case and reverse the First Circuit’s decision.  

Radical ideologues can no longer be allowed to take advantage of vulnerable and confused children in public schools. Parental rights can no longer be usurped by educators who think that they can make better decisions for a child than their own parents. Please pray that God will guide the attorneys on this case as they take the next steps to appeal it and that the case will find favor before the U.S Supreme Court. Pray that we would find support and assistance from those in positions of power. And pray for strength and peace for the family at the center of this case. 

With your support, MFI will never stop fighting for families that have been harmed by these radical ideologies. 

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