Why Secret Social Transitions Betray Parents and Harm Students

Parents have the fundamental right—and responsibility—to raise and educate their children. For decades, many parents have chosen to partner with public schools to fulfill their responsibility and to help teach their kids basic academics, like reading, math, science, and history.

That understanding used to be straightforward. Schools have historically respected parents as the primary decision-makers in their children’s lives. But, in recent years, schools have begun excluding parents from consequential decisions, hiding critical information from them, and even lying to them about their child’s health and well-being.

By some estimates, more than 1,000 school districts nationwide have adopted policies that allow—and sometimes encourage—staff to socially transition minors in secret. School staff facilitate children adopting a new “gender identity” at school without their parents’ knowledge or consent, calling them by different names and biologically inaccurate pronouns at school—but using their given name and accurate pronouns when communicating with their parents.

That isn’t education. It’s deception.

It not only breaches the trust placed in schools by the parents and 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 and its pervasive intrusion into school policies and classroom curriculum. Most people understand foundational biological truths: There are only two sexes—male and female—and sex cannot be changed. But gender ideology teaches that a child can be “born in the wrong body,” and that a person’s sex is determined by their subjective feelings of gender rather than objective facts of science.

And that radical ideology has come to the classroom.

Socially transitioning a child at school generally follows a consistent pattern. It can include school staff:

• Referring to a child by a different name and inaccurate pronouns
• Encouraging a child to wear opposite-sex clothes
• Facilitating a child’s use of opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms
• Treating a child as the opposite sex or a different “gender identity” in class

Secret-social-transition policies cropped up at the local district level in tandem with Biden– and Obama-era efforts to push gender ideology on schools nationally.

That, in turn, emboldened some school districts to adopt harmful policies that exclude parents from critical decisions about their children’s health and well-being and drive a wedge between parents and their kids. With estimates of nearly 6,000 public schools nationwide having such policies—potentially impacting millions of children—that’s too many parents being kept in the dark about their child’s health and well-being.

And some of those parents have reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom to help protect their fundamental right to direct their child’s upbringing and education.

Parents push back against secret social transitions

The government should never keep parents out of important conversations and decisions about their own child’s education, health, and well-being. That’s especially true at school, where children spend a lot of their waking hours. But many school districts have adopted policies that do exclude parents and require staff to hide information from them.

New York mother Jennifer Vitsaxaki found this out firsthand. After her family moved to the U.S. from Greece, her daughter struggled to adapt at Skaneateles Middle School, and Jennifer worked closely with school counselors and a school psychologist to help her through her struggles.

As her daughter’s struggles worsened, Jennifer repeatedly asked school staff if something was wrong. Multiple staff members—including school counselors and teachers—told her no.

That was a lie. Staff members had been meeting regularly with Jennifer’s daughter and, per district policy, had begun referring to her by a masculine name and “they/them” pronouns. But when they spoke with Jennifer, they used her daughter’s correct name and accurate pronouns.

Jennifer only learned the truth when her daughter’s English teacher, uncomfortable with the deception, pressured the principal to inform her. Even then, school officials made clear they had no plans to stop.

Jennifer had no choice but to withdraw her daughter and enroll her in a private school 25 miles away. ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on Jennifer’s behalf in January 2024. A federal district court dismissed her case, but after the Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit vacated that dismissal and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings.

Secret social transitions are a widespread issue

Unfortunately for parents across the country, secret social transitions are not exclusive to the Skaneateles Central School District. As ADF President, CEO, and Chief Counsel Kristen Waggoner previously noted in a debate, there are dozens of cases across the country dealing with this very subject.

ADF has advocated to defend and protect parents’ rights in several cases, as more school districts socially transition children without parental 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 social transition protocol on students, confusing their daughter. When Stephen and Marissa opted to seek counseling to help her, they asked the school to stop having private conversations with her. Without their knowledge, the school rejected their care plan and began socially transitioning their daughter behind their backs. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in April 2026, despite issuing an earlier per curiam opinion that affirmed parental rights in a similar case.
• In Mead v. Rockford Public School District, Michigan parents Dan and Jennifer Mead discovered that their daughter’s middle school had been treating her as a boy—without their knowledge or consent. They only found out when they received a document a staff member had accidentally left partially unaltered, revealing the masculine name and male pronouns being used to refer to their daughter. When the Meads asked the school to stop, the principal admitted he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. The Meads withdrew their daughter from the school, and in December 2023, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on their behalf. A district court allowed part of their case to move forward in September 2025 and, a year later, granted the Meads’ motion for reconsideration, reviving their other claim. Despite that vindicating order, a month later, the Meads made the difficult decision to dismiss the case before final judgment to protect their daughter and family from further harm and the stress of litigation.
• In Osborn v. Houston Independent School District, Texas parents Sarah and Terry Osborn discovered a masculine name on their daughter’s schoolwork and learned school employees had been treating her as a boy for several months. They instructed them to stop and only refer to her by her given name and female pronouns. The parents thought that settled the matter. Imagine their surprise—and frustration—a year later, when they learned that district employees had continued to socially transition their daughter in secret. The Osborns told 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. ADF filed a federal lawsuit against the district on behalf of Sarah and Terry, challenging this harmful policy. Thankfully, in December 2025, the school district ultimately agreed to respect the parents’ express wishes concerning their daughter.

All of these cases, and many more, highlight how schools don’t just undermine parents by socially transitioning their children in secret. Schools are sometimes 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. And they are fundamental rights protected by the Constitution. They include the right to make decisions about children’s upbringing, education, and healthcare that are consistent with their family’s values and 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 it is a form of “support,” not treatment, for gender dysphoria because it does not involve hormonal drugs or surgical procedures. They claim social transition is reversible, has mental-health benefits, and make a case for not telling parents based on the need to ensure student safety from parental rejection and abuse.

But trusted experts state that social transition is not a neutral or benign act. It is an experimental psychosocial treatment that increases the odds of long-term persistence of gender dysphoria and has a high likelihood of changing a child’s path, with highly unpredictable long-term effects on their physical and mental health.

Indeed, studies have shown that the vast majority of children experiencing gender dysphoria will naturally outgrow it if left to progress through puberty without intervention. But those rates collapse when social transition is involved.

Whether a child should adopt a new “gender identity” is a serious and complicated decision with major lifelong implications for a child’s mental and physical health. So why are schools cutting parents out of these life-changing discussions and actively hiding critical information about their child’s health and well-being from them?

Schools should never keep secrets from parents. Because it’s parents—not bureaucrats—who have primary decision-making authority in their children’s lives. Parents know and love their children best. And to make informed decisions, parents need to know if their child is struggling, especially with their identity or gender.

Secret-social-transition policies betray parents and harm children. ADF will always stand in support of parents and their fundamental right to raise and educate their children—and against policies that drive a wedge between parents and vulnerable children when they need their parents’ wisdom and support the most.