ROCKFORD, Mich. — Attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedoms Center for Parental Rights have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a family, who claim the district hid the fact that their child, who was born a female, was using a male name and pronouns.
This is all alleged to have happened in 2022.
The family has since pulled their child from Rockford Schools in favor of homeschooling.
Vincent Wagner, speaking on behalf of the parents, explained to FOX 17 that the family, “like all parents, have the right to good information about what's going on in the schools with their kids, and Rockford hid that information from the [family]. That it started treating their middle school daughter as a boy, calling her a masculine name and by male pronouns.”
According to Wagner, the parents became aware of the district’s actions in October 2022, when they were mistakenly given a copy of a “partially altered” document that listed their child as a male.
“As directed by the district’s policy, district employees— employees the [family] had trusted with sensitive information about [their child]’s mental health— deliberately changed [their child]’s school records to conceal the fact that the district was treating their daughter as a boy without their knowledge,” the lawsuit says.
It goes on to state that the family, “only discovered it because one employee forgot to remove the masculine name and male pronouns from one section of [their child]’s records, after removing it from other sections of the same document, and inadvertently gave the [family] the document she had only partially altered."
Wagner says that employee then went on to further alter the document on the district’s end, removing any references to the child’s male name and pronouns.
“The [family] want to make sure other families are protected from what they went through,” he told FOX 17 on Wednesday. “They don't want other parents to find out that their schools have been hiding information like this from them.”
There is currently no law that says school districts in Michigan must conceal a student’s efforts to transition from their parents or guardians, nor any statute that says they have to disclose it either. The Michigan State Board of Education has put out what they call “guidance” on creating safe and supportive learning environments for students who identify as transgender or questioning.
In it, they state “when students have not come out to their parents, a disclosure to parents should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis, school districts should consider the health, safety, and well-being of the student, as well as the responsibility to keep parents informed.”
However, policies around these issues are left up to individual districts to decide how they implement them.
FOX 17 reached out to Rockford Schools Superintendent Dr. Steve Matthews on Wednesday for comment, who said they had not yet been officially served with the suit.
“We will not be responding to media requests for comment for a couple of reasons. First, we prefer not to try the case through the media. The appropriate place to respond, in my opinion, is in the courtroom in front of a judge,” Dr. Matthews said. “Secondly, we respect the privacy rights of this family. Even though they have and are speaking out, we do not believe it is in the best interest of the student or the family for us to comment in public. Again, the appropriate place to respond is in the court.”
The full lawsuit court document can be found below:
