A federal judge in Wyoming blocked a school district from hiding students' gender identities from their parents.
Chief Judge Scott Skavdahl of the U.S. District Court of Wyoming issued the preliminary injunction Friday in a lawsuit brought by Sean and Ashley Willey, who asked the judge to block Sweetwater County School District No. 1 from enforcing a policy requiring district staffers to call students by their preferred names and pronouns, and to respect the students' "privacy," the Cowboy State Daily reported.
The Willeys accused the district of treating their high school daughter as a boy and hiding it from her parents. The April lawsuit is ongoing.
Skavdahl's injunction blocked the "privacy" part of the policy but did not block school staffers from using alternate names and pronouns for students who request it.
The judge said the "privacy" clause is a constitutional problem. The Supreme Court has recognized that parents have a 14th Amendment right to the care, custody, and control of their children.
"[It is] difficult to envision why a school would even claim — much less how a school could establish — a generalized interest in withholding or concealing from the parents of minor children information fundamental to their identity, personhood, and mental and emotion wellbeing such as their preferred name and pronouns," Skavdahl wrote, quoting from 2022 case law.
"Certainly, if there was a reasonable basis to fear the minor child would be in danger or potentially abused, that could provide an exception to the disclosure and corresponding duty to report under Wyoming law. However, there is no suggestion that such a situation existed in this case."
Skavdahl said that blocking the school district from calling students by their preferred names and pronouns could jeopardize receiving federal Title IX money, since the Department of Education requires schools to accommodate transgender students' wishes relating to their gender identity.
That Biden administration regulation is paused in 20 states, but Wyoming is not one of the states involved in a multi-state lawsuit against the department.
Skavdahl's ruling came a day after the school district filed a motion to dismiss the Willeys' lawsuit.
The judge ruled that Ashley Willey has standing as a parent and as a teacher in the district, but Sean Willey does not have standing to ask for a preliminary injunction because he's not the student's father and hasn't shown a legal connection to her.
The policy also affects Ashley Willey as a teacher in a different school in the district, wrote Skavdahl, because it may require her to lie to parents despite her religious beliefs.
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