The Manchester School District’s policy of allowing students to keep their gender identity while at school private does not violate a parent’s constitutional rights, according to an opinion released Friday by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
The lawsuit was filed by the mother of a student who found out inadvertently that their child was using a different name and pronouns while at school. The mother, who disapproved of their child’s transgender status, alleged the school was violating her parental rights by shielding that information. (Both the mother and the child are identified only by their initials in the lawsuit.)
But on a 3-to-1 ruling, the justices declared that the policy, which was first adopted in 2021, does not directly harm a parent’s ability to raise or care for their child.
“The policy does not restrict a parent’s ability to learn information from other sources, including from the child,” wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald. “The policy does not encourage students to hide information from their parents or prevent students from sharing information.”
Justices Patrick Donovan and James Bassett concurred with MacDonald that the policy did not violate any fundamental parenting rights laid out in the New Hampshire Constitution.
While Manchester’s policy directs all school staff to respect the wishes of a student not to disclose their transgender status outside of school, the policy does have an exemption for when the safety of the student is of concern.
A lower court judge previously ruled in favor of the school district, noting that “the policy places no limits on the plaintiff’s ability to parent her child as she sees fit.”
In her dissent, Justice Melissa Countway wrote that concealing information from a parent “interferes with a parent’s fundamental right to parent.”
Countway added that “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.”
The case is part of an ongoing, broader fight over the rights of transgender minors in New Hampshire, including whether transgender girls are able to play on girls sports teams in schools.
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