Mom sues Virginia school district over daughter’s transgender secret

A Virginia mother is suing her local school district, which she says declined to notify her that her daughter was identifying as a boy at school and was being harassed and assaulted by other students.

Michele Blair said her daughter ran away from home and was sexually abused around the country as a result of the Appomattox County Public Schools’ failure to notify her.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Blair says her daughter, Sage, told a school official that she identified as boy but did not make her gender identity change known at home. The school did not either, she says.

Instead, school officials encouraged Sage to use the boys’ restroom, where she was harassed and assaulted, according to the legal filing.

“Notably, Mrs. Blair was notified and had to consent to her daughter receiving a Tylenol at school, yet was never informed about something as consequential as being affirmed as a boy, using the boys’ bathroom and being harassed and sexually assaulted at school,” states the 54-page lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

A spokesperson for Appomattox County Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal case highlights the tensions between the parental rights movement and the LGBTQ movement.

Ms. Blair said the school’s decision to withhold important medical information led to a decline in her daughter’s mental health to the point that Sage ran away from home. As a result, she was kidnapped, drugged and raped by multiple men from the District of Columbia, Maryland and eventually Texas, the lawsuit states.

She says a lawyer in Maryland working for the state kept Sage in transgender and group housing and did not release her to her mother.

Aneesa Khan, who works for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and is listed as a defendant, declined to comment.

“We fully support our attorney, who appropriately represented her client in accordance with her legal, ethical, and professional obligations,” Maryland Public Defender Natasha M. Dartigue said in a statement.

Sage was 14 at the time of the rapes. The lawsuit says she will need lifelong therapy to address her post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Blair family accuses the district of violating Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The lawsuit says the district was indifferent to Sage’s claims of sexual assault and harassment at school and violated civil and privacy rights.

“Please do not leave us in the dark,” Ms. Blair said of the school’s interactions with parents. “We love our children. If you see anything going on with a child, you need to notify a parent immediately.”

Vernadette Broyles, a lawyer representing Ms. Blair, said hers is just one of roughly 20 cases of parents suing schools for not disclosing matters related to gender identity.

“We are overrun,” said Ms. Broyles, president and general counsel for the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. “[Lawsuits] are being filed all the time.”

She said schools used to work openly with parents to do what’s best for the child but have made a historic shift away from transparency.

In another case against schools, a group of parents from diverse religious backgrounds asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow them to opt their children out of story time when the books involve gender and sexuality issues, including those that promote LGBTQ rights.

In August, the California attorney general sued the Chino Valley Unified School District, which had a policy of notifying parents when their children started using pronouns inconsistent with their biological sex.

Meanwhile, Spreckels Union School District decided to settle a lawsuit with a California family for $100,000 after withholding information about a student’s gender transition and reportedly encouraging the gender change.

Arthur Leonard, a professor at New York Law School and an advocate for gay and lesbian issues, said transgender rights have been a focus of legal battles for decades, specifically since the 1990s, but schools have become involved only within the past 10 years.

“It is not surprising that the transgender issue has emerged dramatically in public schools, starting with litigation by transgender students seeking to be recognized consistent with their gender identity, and of course encompassing employment disputes, library collections, public assemblies and theatricals,” Mr. Leonard said. “The issue is popping up all over.”

He said the debate is not just about parental rights versus transgender rights. Many parents of transgender minors are fighting to represent their children in courts so they can use school facilities that match their identity.

“One of the potentially significant results of all this litigation may come in the practice of restroom architecture — a salutary trend towards greater protection for individual privacy by the redesign of facilities,” Mr. Leonard said.