Wealthy NJ district sued for allowing kids to change their names and gender on school records without parents knowing
A wealthy elite New Jersey school district is being sued for allowing students to change their names and gender identities on school records without telling their parents, reports say.
The controversial Chathams School District policy also keeps parents in the dark when giving students access to bathrooms and locker rooms based on what gender they identify with, according to NJ.com.
The directive reportedly gives the district’s guidance counselors the authority to decide “whether, and to what extent” parents can be informed.
“They have a policy in the school district that will actually punish children that don’t use the demanded new gender identity pronoun and name of another student,” seethed Moms for Liberty CEO and founder Tina Descovich, whose group is among the plaintiffs, to Fox News Digital.
“They can do that just one time on accident, and they can be punished up to suspension just for using the wrong pronoun or the wrong name of someone that is identifying as something other than they actually are,” she said of other students.
Moms for Liberty joined Moms for America and two anonymous parents of elementary-school-age girls in the suit, which accuses the district policy of violating parents’ constitutional due-process rights under the 14th Amendment.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 24, comes months after the US Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta that granted an injunction against California policies that kept students’ gender identities confidential from parents.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits of the policies.
“The court has made clear in the Mirabelli case, and the Third Circuit has a decision along the same lines, that parents have standing to challenge a policy like this,” said Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society representing the plaintiffs, to Fox.
“The policy provides that this information will be hidden from them, so [parents] have the right to object to it, whether or not their particular child or children is at that moment being transitioned.
“And there’s always a risk, of course, that the child under peer pressure, or the influence of teachers, or social media, will go along with this ridiculous trend and decide that his gender is not the biological one that parents believe is God-given and immutable but some other gender,” the lawyer said.
The New Jersey school district — one of the Garden State’s richest and highest-performing — has pushed back on the notion that it is legally bound by the Mirabelli decision.
At a school-board meeting in June, board President Ann Ciccareli said the district is required to follow the state’s Law Against Discrimination, which permits the policy, as well as state Education Department 2018 guidance on transgender students.
New Jersey Attorney General Mathew Platkin has acknowledged that the state guidance is not mandatory, according to NJ.com.