Organizations in the liberty movement, as well as the attorneys general of a dozen states, are rallying to the Goldwater Institute’s side in defense of a Maine mom’s constitutionally protected parental rights.
Amber Lavigne was helping her 13-year-old daughter clean her room in preparation for a painting project one early December day in 2022, when she found a chest binder—an undergarment used to flatten breasts—in the room. The Newcastle mom was shocked when her daughter explained that it had been given to her by a social worker at Great Salt Bay Community School, who had been secretly advising her about gender transitioning. Making matters worse, the social worker told Amber’s daughter the school wasn’t going to inform her parents about any of it, and that the girl didn’t need to do so either.
Understandably outraged, Amber confronted both the principal of her daughter’s public school and the superintendent of the school district. But administrators only justified the counselor’s actions, claiming that no school policy had been broken by a school social worker giving a young girl a chest binder without ever informing the girl’s parents.
The Goldwater Institute filed a federal lawsuit on Amber’s behalf against the Great Salt Bay Community School Board for violating her constitutionally protected parental rights, and now, her case is on appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Recently, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, and the attorneys general in twelve states— South Carolina, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia—all filed briefs urging the First Circuit to protect Amber’s constitutional rights.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held, over the last century, that parents have a fundamental right to control and direct the education and upbringing of their children,” says Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney Adam Shelton, lead attorney on the case. “But parents cannot meaningfully exercise this right if public schools hide vital information about decisions made and actions taken by school officials that directly affect the mental health and physical wellbeing of a child—which is exactly what the Great Salt Bay Community School did to Ms. Lavigne. The school board has decided that it knows what’s best for kids, better than their own parents, and is cutting parents out of the equation—in violation of the U.S. Constitution.”
“This was no accident: my daughter’s public school counselor deliberately tried to keep me in the dark, encouraging my daughter’s gender transition and encouraging her to hide it from me,” Amber adds. “When school officials found out, they actually defended the counselor’s actions, trampling on my constitutional rights at every turn. I deserve to know what’s happening to my child—the secrecy needs to stop.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom’s brief expressed similar sentiments: “A fundamental right to make decisions about the education of one’s children or other important childrearing decisions means little if schools can simply refuse to give parents the information they need to make those decisions.” Meanwhile, the Child and Parental Rights Campaign brief explained that a lower court ruling discounted the importance and fundamental nature of parental rights, and in so doing allowed the school board to get away with a secret policy that deprives parents of their fundamental freedoms.
Finally, the dozen states that lined up in support of Amber said in their brief that they are “committed to respecting parental rights” and to making certain that safeguards are “in place to ensure [parental rights] are protected by state law.” These states further explained that in just the last few years, policies that allow the withholding of information from parents “have proliferated around the country, threatening to undermine the family unit and to infringe parental rights,” and argued that Amber should have her day in court.
The Goldwater Institute thanks the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Child and Parents Rights Campaign and the states of South Carolina, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia for their support in this important fight. And we pledge never to back down in the battle to protect the parents’ right to control and direct the education and upbringing of their children.
You can read more about this case here.
