Summary of facts: The Delaware Valley Regional High School Board of Education began using male pronouns to address a female student and hiding her “social transition” from her father for several months before telling him that state law and district policy require them to continue to treat her as a boy against her father’s wishes. The child’s father filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, arguing that the school district had violated his fundamental rights as a parent. That court denied his request to stop facilitating his daughter’s “social transition.” The father is now appealing that denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

RFI’s position: Since the founding of America, a fundamental aspect of parental rights has been the ability to guide the moral and spiritual upbringing of one’s children, including beliefs about human nature and teachings from holy texts. And history shows no principled basis to distinguish between executive and legislative intrusions upon fundamental rights, let alone that an infringement of parental rights must “shock the conscience” to be legally recognized. Whatever the test, a government act that usurps parental authority to secretly indoctrinate a child about gender, sexuality, and how God created her is an assault on what the Founders recognized as sacred rights protected by the Constitution that are essential to a free society.

Read the brief here.