In one of those "oh, hell no" moments, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, in effect, parents have no right to know if their kids are being "socially transitioned" in their schools. This is a complete affront to the principle of parental rights. Lawyer and commentator Sarah Parshall Perry has some thoughts:

INCREDIBLE🔽

1st Circuit Court of Appeals just held that parents have no right to know if a school is socially transitioning their child behind their backs, determining that a "safe and inclusive" learning environment does not restrict parental rights.

I have thoughts 🧵 pic.twitter.com/cLamA2MuAk

— Sarah Parshall Perry (@SarahPPerry) February 25, 2025

In summary:

In Foote v. Ludlow (per curiam opinion, 2/18/25), parents had challenged a school's policy of hiding gender identity information of minor children from their parents.

The school claimed that the policy is "appropriate and necessary to ensure a safe and inclusive school learning…

— Sarah Parshall Perry (@SarahPPerry) February 25, 2025

This post reads in full:

In Foote v. Ludlow (per curiam opinion, 2/18/25), parents had challenged a school's policy of hiding gender identity information of minor children from their parents.  

The school claimed that the policy is "appropriate and necessary to ensure a safe and inclusive school learning environment" for students.

The court ruled, in effect, that the schools have no obligation to inform parents if their children are being "socially transitioned" in the schools. This is especially disturbing given the number of activist "teachers" we've been seeing in recent years.

Sarah Parshall Perry's thread is worth reading in its entirety, and I won't try to explain all the legal arguments. That's not my area of expertise. But what's really disturbing about all this is the seeming disregard of parental rights. Parents, not the schools, are the primary decision-makers for children. Parents, not the schools, should be the ones with the final say, and that means they must be fully informed. Schools are generally required to have written permission from parents to take kids on a field trip to see how bread is baked or to visit a museum, but the 1st Circuit would have us believe that the schools are under no obligation to notify parents that their child is starting down a path that could lead to unnecessary, permanent and debilitating hormonal and even surgical treatments?

That's an affront to good sense. But then, there is much around this issue that is an affront to good sense.

See Related: Democrat Maine Governor Doubles Down on Transgender Policies After Trump Tiff, USDA Title IX Review

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To see Sarah Parshall Perry's full argument for parental rights in this matter, see this:

I have written about the unconstitutionality of these school secrecy policies (and the analysis the 1st Circuit court SHOULD have taken), here:

Public School Gender Policies That Exclude Parents Are Unconstitutional | The Heritage Foundationhttps://t.co/4BV7nNhqma

— Sarah Parshall Perry (@SarahPPerry) February 25, 2025

The court's full documentation in this case can be viewed here.

Hopefully, this will be appealed. In the name of the rights of parents, this has to be challenged. A child can't have a tooth pulled without parental approval; it's absurd to think that schools should be able to withhold serious information like this from parents where their children are concerned. The schools, after all, in our current system, are an arm of government. They shouldn't be, but they are. They work for parents. They should answer to the parents, not to gender ideology activists.