CONCORD, New Hampshire (LifeSiteNews) — The New Hampshire Supreme Court has just sided against a mother who was suing a school board after not being proactively informed about her child’s request to be called a name associated with the opposite gender while at school.
In a 3-1 opinion, the high court upheld a lower court decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by the mother against the Manchester School District. The district had instituted a policy that said, “School personnel should not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status or gender nonconforming presentation to others including parents and other school personnel, unless legally required to do so or unless the student has authorized such disclosure.”
In the court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, the policy “does not directly implicate a parent’s ability to raise and care for his or her child.”
Attorney Meghan Glynn made similar claims during oral arguments, stating that, “If the parents want to make a different choice, they can homeschool, or they can send their child to a private school; those are options available to them.”
But Associate Justice Melissa Countway, the lone dissenting voice in the case, said the rule clearly does interfere with a parent’s fundamental right to parent.
“Because accurate information in response to parents’ inquiries about a child’s expressed gender identity is imperative to the parents’ ability to assist and guide their child, I conclude that a school’s withholding of such information implicates the parents’ fundamental right to raise and care for the child,” she wrote.
According to NH Journal reporter Michael Graham, the mother who filed the lawsuit learned about her child’s apparent gender dysphoria after a teacher accidentally informed her about it. The mother then requested that her child be spoken to and treated according to their biological sex. The teachers complied, Graham says, but were overruled by the principal, who told the woman that doing so would violate the district’s policy, at which point she filed a lawsuit.
The woman’s attorney said the ruling dismisses “the importance of parental rights,” while the school district praised it as allowing them to provide “a quality education in an environment that is safe and welcoming to all students.”
It is not readily known if the mother will appeal her case to the United States Supreme Court.
This story is developing…