Mead v. Rockford Public School District | ADFMedia.org
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Description: Dan and Jennifer Mead sued the Rockford Public School District in Michigan after district employees began treating the couple's middle-school daughter as a boy without their knowledge or consent and taking steps to conceal these actions from the parents.
Parents Dan and Jennifer Mead
Michigan school district treats girl as boy behind parents' backs
ADF attorneys sue Rockford Public School District for referring to middle-school girl by masculine name, male pronouns while concealing actions from parentsMonday, Dec 18, 2023
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed suit against a Michigan school district Monday on behalf of a mother and father after district employees began treating the couple's middle-school daughter as a boy without their knowledge or consent and taking steps to conceal these actions from the parents.
Dan and Jennifer Mead withdrew their daughter from the eighth grade at East Rockford Middle School in October 2022 after district employees, acting in compliance with Rockford Public School District policy, treated their daughter as a boy by referring to her by a masculine name and male pronouns without notifying the Meads or seeking their consent. Employees had altered the girl's official records to remove references to the district's actions before sending the records home. The Meads only discovered the district's actions when an employee unintentionally failed to completely alter a report about their daughter before sharing it with them. By concealing this important information, the district violated the Meads' fundamental parental rights. The U.S. Constitution protects their right as parents to make decisions about the upbringing, education, and health care of their children.
"Parents, not the government, have the right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of their children," said ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson, director of ADF's Center for Parental Rights. "Schools should never deliberately hide vital information from parents, yet that's exactly what the Rockford Public School District did. District employees didn't even notify Dan and Jennifer—let alone seek their consent—before beginning to call their young daughter by a masculine name and male pronouns. Worse, district policy required employees to alter official records to conceal the district's actions. By intentionally concealing this information from the Meads, the school district violated their constitutionally protected right to make decisions regarding their daughter's education and wellbeing and destroyed the trust the Mead family had placed in the district and its employees."
The Meads' daughter started sixth grade at East Rockford Middle School in August 2020 as an 11-year-old. As the fall semester progressed, she fell behind in her studies, and Jennifer Mead began to communicate regularly with her daughter's teachers and other district employees about her progress, as well as her wellbeing more generally. Over the next two school years, the Meads' daughter met regularly with a school counselor, and the Meads placed significant trust in the counselor as well as other district employees. The counselor freely shared information about those meetings with Jennifer, most notably, about changes to the girl's wellbeing the counselor had perceived.
In May 2022, the Meads' daughter sent a message to the school counselor asking her to e-mail her teachers and tell them to start calling her by a masculine name. From then until the end of the school year, just a few weeks later, the counselor corresponded multiple times, at length, with Jennifer but did not notify her of her daughter's request to use a masculine name. When the Meads' daughter started eighth grade in August of that year—from the very first day—employees began referring to her by the masculine name without the Meads' knowledge or consent. Within weeks, they were regularly using that masculine name and male pronouns for the Meads' daughter.
Despite informing the Meads of the details of her discussions with their daughter up to that point, the school counselor chose not to tell them about this request. Indeed, district employees chose to affirmatively conceal this information from the Meads. It wasn't until Dan Mead met with a district employee in October 2022 to discuss the district's plan for accommodating his daughter's recent autism diagnosis that he and his wife realized the district had been making a concerted effort to hide his daughter's masculine name and pronouns from them. The district had removed references to the masculine name and male pronouns from documents that the Meads would see until one employee inadvertently gave Dan a document that included comments from a teacher using the masculine name and male pronouns to refer to his daughter.
At first, the Meads thought this was a mistake—that another child's information had been included in their daughter's documents. But they soon learned the truth. When the Meads asked district employees to refrain from using the masculine name and male pronouns, the district refused to comply with their wishes. District policy required such actions from the employees.
As ADF attorneys explain in the lawsuit, the district's violations of the Meads' constitutionally protected parental rights destroyed the Meads' trust in the counselor, administrators, and other district employees with whom they had shared intimate details about their daughter's and their own lives. As a result of this breach, the Meads were compelled to withdraw their daughter from the district's schools.
ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit, Mead v. Rockford Public School District, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
ABOUT Kate Anderson
Kate Anderson serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where she is the director of the Center for Parental Rights. Since joining ADF in 2015, Anderson has focused on protecting the conscience rights of individuals being unjustly compelled to forfeit their beliefs under threat of government retaliation, heavy fines, or other punishment. Prior to joining ADF, Anderson was an associate attorney with Ellis, Li & McKinstry, PLLC, in Seattle, where she litigated both civil and criminal cases. She obtained her law degree magna cum laude in 2009 from Gonzaga University School of Law, where she served on the Gonzaga Law Review. She is admitted to the state bars of Arizona and Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court, and several federal district and appellate courts.
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Pay close attention to your kids.
Public schools can no longer be automatically trusted with them.
While I agree with you in this case, I want to point out the implied rights to privacy used to justify the original Roe decision was based in part on a case ruling used to rule for parental rights against a school. Since the SCOTUS has ruled that no such implied right exists I wouldn't put it past some school district lawyer to use it against parents in a case like this.
Any supposition that “schools rights” somehow trump parental rights is just crazy talk. No matter how one tries to rational it. The day the state takes over final decisions for our kids is the end of the USA as we know it.
Full stop.
Learn your history. It was the USA as we now it during the early days of the education system. The laws and mores change which is why the conservative populist idea of "originalism" is a crock of shit.
Before Pierce v. Society of Sisters in 1925 children were "mere creatures of the state" and schools were in charge while the children were there.
The recent SCOTUS decision overturning Roe says there there are no unenumerated rights. You can't have things both ways.
I know my history just fine which is to stay I can recognize attempts at revisionist history when they show up.
Attempting to equate the Dobbs decision with parental rights is simple a Marxist style wackadoodle position to take.
C’mon man!
since the ADF is a group of thumped out religious fucks, it's a safe bet most of the facts are missing from this story.
If you have something substantive to add, that refutes what is shown in the article, feel free. Anything else with be dealt with accordingly.
Do they still send report cards home?
Children, who claim to have gender dysphoria, should be required to go to ongoing counseling with psychologists/psychiatrists in order to help them navigate life with a better understanding of themselves and others.
Some research has shown it is entirely likely that many, if not the majority, of the children with gender dysphoria are homosexual. Also, highly narcissistic and dangerous physically and mentally to others.
Therefore, it is the duty of people in the educational field to notify parents and refer the parents and child to medical professionals for counseling on how to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.
There is no good reason the state should be making decisions like that without the parents. If the parents are being negligent in some way, then the state may need to get involved but never without having the parents in the loop.
Never.
It is almost like child sexual predators have taken over our country's education system as it is the easiest way to have access to and groom their prey.
“It is almost like child sexual predators have taken over our country's education system as it is the easiest way to have access to and groom their prey.”
This is so wrong on so many levels…impugning so many who only care for our children in a convoluted attempt to say just what? Groom their prey? Please.
They are doing their best to groom those in their charge for success, to be their best, to be a good citizen…all in spite of such ignorant invective thrown their way.
Problem? Get involved.
I am not wrong about teachers overstepping their boundaries when they don't involve the children's parents about their children's academic and social problems. The children do not belong to the state and certainly not to some stranger with a teaching degree.
Teachers are hired to teach the subjects they have a degree.
NONE of them have a degree in counseling students with gender dysphoria do they? If not, then they have zero business promoting mental illness in children. They are doing the child a great disservice by not referring them to the appropriate medical professionals who can help them deal with their issues and questions about gender identity.
I had wonderful teachers and a few not so wonderful teachers, but overall I admire the dedication (and courage) it takes to try to teach a group of children lumped together because of age and not social and/or academic ability.
I was very involved with my children's education because I knew better than to trust my children to strangers I knew little to absolutely nothing about.
Foremost, I was very involved with spending time with my children and listening to what was going on in and outside of the classroom. If necessary, I would meet with a teacher, a principal or in a few instances, the school superintendent.
There is no good reason to not involve parents in decisions like. Reasons, but no good ones.
Some are but it seems more and more have a different agenda.
It's a mystery to me why schools want to get involved with the mental health of their students, it's not their job and they are not qualified!
It's the same argument I use when State wants to get involved in the mental & physical health of students. It's not their job and they are not qualified.
Madness