Parents put their kids on the bus each morning in an act of trust. They trust schools to teach the basics—reading, math, science, history—and to return their children home fundamentally the same kids they sent out the door.
That understanding used to be simple. Schools used to respect that parents had the primary role in their children’s lives. But they have overstepped that role in ways many families never anticipated.
Across the country, many districts have quietly adopted policies that allow—and sometimes encourage—staff to socially transition minors in secret. They will call students by cross-sex names and pronouns, give them gender-ideology propaganda, and even encourage them to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, all without notifying parents. In the worst cases, schools don’t just withhold information; they conceal it from parents. They refer to the child by her correct name and pronouns when talking with her parents, while treating her as a different identity during the school day.
That isn’t education. It’s deception.
It not only breaches the trust placed in schools by the families they’re supposed to serve, but it also violates parents’ constitutional rights.
How gender ideology fuels social transitions in the classroom
The rise in secret social transitions has coincided with the rise in gender ideology. That’s no accident. Most people understand the fundamental biological truth: men and women are not interchangeable. But gender ideology claims otherwise.
And that radical claim has come to the classroom.
Socially transitioning a confused child in school follows a consistent pattern. It can include school staff:
- Referring to a child by an opposite-sex name or pronouns
- Encouraging a child to wear opposite-sex clothes
- Facilitating a child to use of opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms
- Treating a child as a “different gender” in class
Secret-social-transition policies cropped up at the local level in tandem with Biden– and Obama-era efforts to push gender ideology on schools nationally. Both administrations tried to force schools to trade biological reality for gender ideology.
That, in turn, emboldened some school districts to adopt these harmful policies. And as The Heritage Foundation points out, this affects quite a few children.
As of late 2023, Heritage estimates that 1,044 school districts representing over 10 million students have adopted secret-social-transition policies.
That’s too many parents potentially being kept in the dark about what’s going on in their child’s classroom.
And many of those parents have reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom to help protect their fundamental rights.
Parents push back against secret social transitions
The government should never keep parents out of conversations about their own child’s well-being. That’s especially true at school, where children spend a good chunk of their waking hours. But some schools have kept secrets from parents anyway.
Two Michigan parents, Dan and Jennifer Mead, found this out firsthand. Their daughter used to attend East Rockford Middle School. While there, she began to regularly meet with a school counselor. The counselor consistently updated Jennifer about her daughter’s academic progress and general well-being at school.
Eventually, the Meads came to communicate even more frequently with the school as part of designing educational accommodations for their daughter. Throughout the process—as with the rest of their daughter’s education—they trusted school staff to keep them informed about how she was doing and how the school was treating her.
That trust was soon betrayed.
Nobody told the Meads—let alone asked for their consent—when the school district began treating their daughter like a boy. They used male pronouns and even a different, masculine name.
Worse, the same Rockford Public School District policy that gave this middle school the green light to secretly transition the Meads’ daughter required district employees to intentionally alter official records to scrub the references to the masculine name and male pronouns.
The Meads only found out about this duplicity because they received a document that was only partially altered. When the parents reached out to the school to stop this social transition, the parents were told by the principal that the school would continue to push this transition.
Thankfully, the Meads’ daughter is doing better now. But after the secret social transition, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on Dan and Jennifer’s behalf against the Rockford Public School District in December 2023.
Secret social transitions are a widespread issue
Unfortunately for parents across the country, secret social transitions are not exclusive to the Rockford Public School District. As ADF President, CEO, and Chief Counsel Kristen Waggoner noted in a recent debate, there are dozens of cases across the country dealing with this very subject.
ADF has taken up numerous cases to defend and protect parental rights, as more school districts socially transition children without consent.
- In Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri had two children attending middle school in Ludlow, Massachusetts. The school pushed its secret-transition policies on students, confusing their two children. When Stephen and Marissa opted to seek counseling to help their daughter, they asked the school to stop discussing sensitive mental health issues with her. The school refused and ceased collaborating with the parents. Instead, the school socially transitioned their daughter. This case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
- In Vitsaxaki v. Skaneateles Central School District, New York mother Jennifer Vitsaxaki discovered that school employees, acting under official district policy, had been treating her daughter as a boy behind her back for months. Because of this discovery, Jennifer felt compelled to withdraw her daughter from the district. This case is at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
- In Osborn v. Houston Independent School District, Sarah and Terry Osborn expressly told their daughter’s school to only refer to her using female pronouns. The parents thought that settled the matter and moved on. Imagine their surprise—and frustration—a year later, when they learned that district employees had been secretly socially transitioning their daughter with male pronouns through her freshman year. The Osborns told the school employees that the secret social transition violated their religious beliefs and instructed them to immediately stop. The employees initially agreed. But at the beginning of their daughter’s junior year, the Osborns discovered that their instructions had been ignored yet again. This case is being argued at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division.
All of these cases, and many more, highlight how schools don’t just undermine parents by socially transitioning their children in secret. Schools are actively misleading parents—lying about or concealing important issues in a child’s life.
Parental rights are natural rights given by God to parents to care for and direct the upbringing of their children. Parental rights are thus fundamental. They include the right to make decisions about children’s education and healthcare in a manner consistent with their family’s beliefs.
And secret social transitions directly violate those rights.
Secret social transitions are harmful—no matter what supporters claim
Proponents of secret social transitions often argue that, because it’s not a surgical or hormonal treatment, it’s a “no harm, no foul” situation.
But even gender-transition advocates label social transition as a form of medical treatment. And they warn that a proper mental-health evaluation—which requires parental involvement—is critical before socially transitioning a child.
So no medical or psychological association endorses socially transitioning a child without parental consent.
That’s because social transition can have harmful, long-term effects on children. Studies have shown that the vast majority of children experiencing gender dysphoria—including 90 percent of children before puberty—will desist, meaning they will come to identify with their biological sex.
But those natural desistance rates collapse when social transition is involved, with more than 90 percent of children persisting in their dysphoria.
This is a very serious matter that can have major long-term implications. So why are schools cutting parents out of these life-changing discussions? Empowering schools to supersede parental rights is dangerous, plain and simple. And that’s why ADF will always stand in support of parents and their right to raise their children without unconstitutional government interference.
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