The Supreme Court Should Affirm That Schools Cannot Usurp Parental Rights

A century ago, the United States Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters famously noted that “the child is not the mere creature of the State.” It is well past time for the Court to once again remind school boards, teachers, and administrators that parents have the God-given right and responsibility to guide the education, upbringing, and health care of their children.

Later this month, the Court will consider whether to take the case of Foote v. Ludlow School Committee — a case that presents a timely opportunity for just such a reminder.

Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri have two children who attended Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Mass. When their son and daughter were just 12 and 11 years old, they learned that Ludlow school officials were pushing gender ideology on their children. School officials were doing this behind the parents’ backs and encouraging Stephen and Marissa’s children to question their own identity.

Their daughter, in particular, continued to struggle with her “gender identity” and other issues. She went to a teacher to share details about these challenges, and the teacher passed on her concerns to the parents. That was the end of any cooperation or collaboration by the school with the parents.

Stephen and Marissa hired a professional therapist to help their daughter, and they asked school officials not to have any private conversations with their daughter so that they could address her struggles as a family. A counselor from Baird Middle School and other school officials regularly met with the daughter and encouraged her to identify as “genderqueer” and start using a male name. They also started to refer to her using “nonbinary pronouns“ like fae/faerae/aer, ve/ver, xe/xem, or ze/zir.

In addition, the school counselor encouraged the daughter to consider using male bathrooms where middle-school boys undressed and called into question whether her parents were providing her with “appropriate care.”

Likewise, the librarian directed Stephen and Marissa’s daughter to Translate Gender, an LGBT-activist organization with which the librarian was affiliated.

The school counselor told staff members not to tell Stephen and Marissa about their daughter’s use of a male name at school. When one concerned teacher eventually told them during a private conversation, the school district fired her.

Defending these actions as district protocol, the superintendent, during a public meeting, called parental rights a “thinly veiled … camouflage” for “intolerance, prejudice and bigotry against LGBTQ individuals,” saying that Ludlow “need[ed] to do more,” not less, to inculcate gender ideology in kids. The school committee chair also demeaned parents’ concerns about secretly transitioning children as “prejudice and bigotry.”

Contrary to the school officials’ epithets, parental rights are pre-political; they are written in the “laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” They are as fundamental to the order of civilization as gravity is to the order of the universe. One cannot violate either without disastrous consequences.

Stephen and Marissa filed a lawsuit, represented by the Child & Parental Rights Campaign. Shockingly, a federal district court dismissed their case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal.

At the First Circuit, Alliance Defending Freedom supported the case by filing an amicus brief in support of parental rights. After that court affirmed the dismissal, ADF joined the Child & Parental Rights Campaign as co-counsel and, in July 2025, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

Earlier this year, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court held that religious parents’ constitutional Free Exercise rights were violated by a school district’s policy promoting transgender ideology with no notice or opt-out provision for parents. The Court found that religious parents have a constitutional right to notice and opt-out from the LGBT-inclusive curriculum.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: “Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint.”

Many other Americans who hold no particular religious beliefs but who managed to pass high school biology also know it is impossible for girls to become boys. Attempting to convince children otherwise can result in devastating harm. If the Court could so clearly see the Maryland school district curriculum with no parental opt-out as a violation of religious liberty, then surely it can see that a school secretly “socially transitioning” a child against the expressed instructions of the parents is far more egregious.

The nightmare scenario of Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri is not an isolated incident. Lawsuits are taking place in New York, Michigan, and Texas on this issue as well. Whether or not the Court decides to hear the Foote case, it will likely have to deal with rogue school districts’ attempts to usurp parental rights eventually. For the sake of preventing irreparable harm to vulnerable and confused children, it should do so sooner rather than later.