Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Area School District’s so-called gender-identity policy is a big middle finger to the basic principles of parental rights. Now a group of parents is fighting back in a case testing the limits of public education power: whether school districts can keep secrets about the children they are educating.
This week, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and America First Legal filed a petition of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Parents Protecting Our Children v. Eau Claire Area School District. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022 in federal district court, alleges the public school system has put in place a policy “to facilitate gender identity transitions at school and to keep this hidden from parents who would disagree that it is in their child’s best interest to change gender identity.”
The district court and the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the case. In the appellate court ruling, Magistrate Judge Steven Crocker wrote that the parents clearly “harbor genuine concerns about possible applications of the School District’s policy,” but none of the parents suffered harm because of the policy.
“No doubt Parents Protecting’s allegations punch with conviction and concern,” Crocker wrote. “But nowhere does the complaint allege that even one of the association’s members — any particular parent — has experienced an actual or imminent injury attributable to the Administrative Guidance or a Support Plan.”
But the parents are directly affected by the pro-transgender policy, WILL notes in the appeal to
