The Alabama Center for Law and Liberty (ACLL) filed an amicus brief on Tuesday opposing a public school’s policy encouraging teachers to hide students’ usage of pronouns that don’t align with their biological sex from their parents.
ACLL filed the brief in the case Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County, which is between a Florida public school system and two parents whose children attended the public schools.
The case follows Leon County Schools' adoption of a program that would encourage children to transition into genders of their choosing without informing their parents. The plan instructed teachers and other school faculty to use preferred pronouns in front of the class but not in front of parents of children who have gender dysphoria.
The plaintiffs argue that the policy is in violation of the 14th Amendment. Their complaint was dismissed in the trial court, but they filed an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which also has jurisdiction over Alabama and Georgia, meaning that the precedent set in this case could impact Alabamians in the future.
“The parents of Alabama do not want the government ramming LGBT ideology down their children’s throats,” ACLL president Matt Clark said. “Hopefully, a win in this case will guarantee that the government may not undermine the rights of Alabama parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”
In the brief, Clark aligned with the plaintiff’s position that Leon County Schools’ policy was unconstitutional.
“100 years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the common-law rights of parents from government intrusion,” Clark said. “Those rights, broadly divided, were the rights to care for their children, protect their children, and educate their children. The common law presumed that parents delegated some of their educational authority to schools, but they still reserved the rights to care for and protect their children. Thus, if the school’s ideas of how to care for and protect the children conflicted with the parents’ wishes, then the parents win.”
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