Mom takes case against school that secretly socially transitioned her daughter to Supreme Court

A mother in Maine whose parental rights were usurped by school officials who gave her gender-confused daughter a chest binder and referred to her by using a male name and pronouns without her consent is taking her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  

In a statement on Dec. 22, the Goldwater Institute announced that it was taking parent Amber Lavigne’s case against the Great Salt Bay Community School in Maine over its efforts to socially transition her teenage daughter behind her back to the U.S. Supreme Court. The development comes five months after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected Lavigne’s petition. 

Lavigne’s legal battles against the Great Salt Bay Community School date back to December 2022, when the concerned parent found a chest binder in her then-13-year-old daughter’s bedroom. A chest binder is used to smash and flatten the breasts of trans-identified girls to make them appear as if they have a flat chest, like a boy. When she confronted her daughter about the binder, she learned that the school's social worker had provided it. 

Upon further investigation, Lavigne discovered that school officials had also secretly begun referring to her daughter by using male pronouns and a male name without her consent. 

The school district defended its actions and rebuffed allegations of wrongdoing, insisting in a December 2022 statement that it acted in accordance with requirements “to provide a safe, welcoming and inclusive educational environment for all students and staff” by following “specific policies and procedures” under state law that seek to ensure “equal access” to students’ education and privacy rights.

Lavigne filed a lawsuit against the school district in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in April 2023. When the district court ruled against her, she appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Now that the appellate court rejected her case, the matter is going before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Goldwater Institute’s petition for a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case argues that the school district violated Lavigne’s rights under the U.S. Constitution to direct the education and upbringing of her children. 

“Not only does it not make sense, by keeping this information from Amber, the Great Salt Bay Community School violated the U.S. Constitution," Goldwater Institute attorney Adam Shelton said. “We are asking the Supreme Court to step in and make it clear that parents like Amber have a right to know when public school officials make important decisions affecting the mental health and physical well-being of their children.”

In a video published at the time of her initial lawsuit in the district court, Lavigne elaborated on the concerns at the center of her complaint. “This situation really is about my parental rights being violated, about a social worker who had never even had a conversation with me encouraging my child to keep secrets from me, to tell her ... ‘Look, I’m not going to tell your mom and you don’t have to either,’” she asserted. 

“I have three kids who need an education, and I would love to be able to send them to a public school, and in the current environment, I’m not comfortable with that,” Lavigne added. “Our goal as parents is to ... raise amazing human beings who contribute to society, who care about other human beings.” 

“To be left out of such a life-altering decision ... it just doesn’t even make sense,” she lamented.

As the Goldwater Institute noted in its statement announcing Lavigne’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, another petition from similarly situated parents is currently before the highest court in the land. Specifically, parents in Massachusetts are seeking relief at the U.S. Supreme Court after school district officials in Ludlow, Massachusetts, encouraged their middle school-aged daughter to identify as nonbinary and use male pronouns in addition to permitting her to use the boys’ bathroom at school without informing them.

The lawsuit against the Great Salt Bay Community School comes as the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into the Maine Department of Education last year over concerns about “teachers and school counselors in Maine reportedly encouraging and helping students to undergo so-called ‘gender transitions’ while keeping parents in the dark.” Pending the outcome of the investigation, Maine could end up losing federal funding.