CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey joined a coalition of 21 state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in support of two Florida parents who were stripped of their fundamental and longstanding right to direct the upbringing and care of their child when officials at Leon County Schools secretly held meetings with their child about gender identity.
“Parents should have all the right in the world to be involved in their children’s education and their time in school, especially when it involves life-altering decisions,” Morrisey said. “For a school to allegedly hide vital information from parents is not only sinister, but potentially damaging.”
In 2020, January and Jeffrey Littlejohn notified their child’s middle school that they did not consent to their child changing names or using they/them pronouns while the child was experiencing “gender confusion.”
However, school officials proceeded to meet secretly with the child regarding preferred name, pronouns, restroom, and room-sharing arrangements for school field trips. The Littlejohns never were notified about the meeting or invited to attend, in accordance with the school district’s policy.
“When a student considers transitioning gender, parents have a fundamental, constitutional right to be involved in that decision making process. Yet school districts across the country, strong-armed by ideologically driven advocacy groups, have shut parents out of the process and trampled on their fundamental rights,” the AGs wrote in the brief.
The coalition is asking the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse a lower court’s ruling and “reaffirm parents’ longstanding, and fundamental, right to be informed of critical information about their child’s mental health and well-being.”
The AGs say students must get permission for lesser decisions and are restricted from a number of activities including the right to vote, enlist in the military without parental consent, and their right to drink alcohol.
“That parental authority is based on the commonsense recognition ‘that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions,’” according to the brief.
Morrisey joined the Florida- and Montana-led brief with Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.