Parent Group Sues Iowa School District For Allegedly Hiding Children’s Gender Transitions

Parents Defending Education is suing the Linn-Mar Community School District near Cedar Rapids over so-called “gender support plans,” which the group says were concealed from parents.

“Nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent makes two things clear: parents have a constitutional liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their children, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” states the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.

The Linn-Mar district is “flouting both of these constitutional guarantees,” the lawsuit claims, by allowing children to make “fundamentally important decisions concerning their gender identity without any parental involvement and to then hide these decisions from their parents.”

Students as young as 12 can work with their school to put together a “gender support plan” under a district policy dubbed “Transgender and Students Nonconforming to Gender Role Stereotypes.”

“Any student in seventh grade or older will have priority of their support plan over their parent/guardian,” the policy states.

Parents cannot be alerted about their child’s gender identity change unless the student explicitly gives his or her consent, the district says.

“The district shall not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status to others including but not limited to other students, parents, and school staff unless legally required to do so (such as national standardized testing, drivers permits, transcripts, etc.), or unless the student has authorized such disclosure,” says the policy.

The policy also specifies that gender support plans will be kept in the student’s “temporary” records rather than their permanent records.

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