Attorney General Knudsen asks SCOTUS to hear parental rights case against woke public school

HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a 22-state coalition that filed a brief in support of parental rights and in opposition to a Massachusetts school district’s policy that allows the “social transitioning” of children without parental consent, stripping parents of their longstanding and fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their children.

The case, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, involves Ludlow Public School in Massachusetts and parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri. The school secretly promoted “social transitioning”— actively subverting the parents’ requests for school personnel to stay out of their family matter and calling their two children by new names and pronouns. It went as far as a school counselor having secret discussions with the students and suggesting that they weren’t safe with their parents.

The brief asks the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to take up the case and reverse the flawed First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that affirmed the district court’s decision in 2023 in favor of the school’s policy.

“Ludlow’s actions should trigger alarm bells. These secret acts, which contravened the parents’ express instructions, violated the constitutionally sacrosanct parent-child relationship. But rather than answering the alarm, the First Circuit greenlit further public intrusions into that relationship, empowering schools to seize control,” Attorney General Knudsen wrote. “Since schools cannot make decisions rooted in parental power without parental consent, courts must evaluate whether a particular decision is rooted in parental or state power. The First Circuit’s conclusion that the decision to socially transition B.F. was wellgrounded in state power was fundamentally wrong.”

The appeals court erred in deciding that parents’ rights disappeared once they decide to place their children in public schools. The court also minimized concerns over gender transition because they were wrongly thought not to cause health issues. The court also went too far ruling that schools can even deceive parents when making decisions on their behalf.

In the brief, Attorney General Knudsen argues the First Circuit’s decision should be reversed because hundreds of years of tradition and history recognize the importance of a parent’s rights to direct the care and upbringing of their children and schools cannot make decisions rooted in parental power without parental consent. Parental rights are constitutionally protected across each state and cannot be overridden when guiding a child’s health or education. SCOTUS has also continued to enshrine those rights under law.

Rather than make decisions for parents and their children, schools have a duty to support parents, not supersede and undermine their direction. Policies as concerning as Ludlow’s set a dangerous precedent in family decision making and violate the trust between parents and schools while violating parental rights.

Attorneys general from West Virgina, Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Guam also joined the brief.

Click here to read the brief.