A Pennsylvania couple is asking the federal government to investigate their local school district after the district socially transitioned their daughter for nearly three years without their knowledge.
The parents allege this conduct violates federal laws plus an executive order and federal court decisions. They also claim it has harmed their daughter and their relationship with her.
Junior Mister
According to a September 21 letter sent by Liberty Counsel on the parents’ behalf to the Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office and Office for Civil Rights, Pennsbury School District staff began treating the daughter, referred to as “Jane,” as a boy at the beginning of her freshman year of high school. (All family members’ names are redacted from the documents released by Liberty Counsel.) Specifically,
the district used the false male name “John” [a redaction of the actual false name] and false male pronouns in personal interactions, electronic information systems, teacher and staff communications, handwritten notes, awards, social-media posts, school events, Senior Night materials, and yearbook or memory-book materials.
Evidence included in the complaint indicates that more than one staff member was complicit in the scheme. In one handwritten note, a teacher referred to “Jane” as “John.” In another, a coach not only wrote “John” twice but opened the note with the exclamation “My son! My boy!” and referred to herself as the student’s “coach/mom.”
“Jane’s” parents did not learn of any of this until near the end of her junior year. “Thus,” observed the letter, “for most of three school years, the district deliberately excluded them from a profound matter affecting their daughter’s identity, upbringing, education, and mental health.”
Transition Provision
Pennsbury policy appears to have conflicting provisions concerning such matters. Board Policy 253.1, entitled “Transgender and Gender Expansive Students,” has a privacy provision stating that students have the right to keep their in-school gender changes from their parents. Yet it also contains a provision that “contemplates parental participation and a completed parent/student form before an unofficial name change,” says the letter.
Given the district’s subsequent behavior, including its less-than-responsive responses to the parents’ requests once they discovered what was happening at school, it hardly comes as a shock that the privacy provision took precedence over the notification provision. The parents claim they were never notified of “Jane’s” transition, much less provided with a parent/student form to complete.
As anyone could have predicted, school officials’ coming between “Jane” and her parents did not end well from the family’s perspective. According to the complaint:
The district’s creation and facilitation of a separate, false identity for the parents’ daughter led to behavioral problems and interpersonal relationship problems between the girl and her parents. The dynamics have continued to decline. Had the district sought written permission, this would have informed the parents so they could take effective action. Parents believe that had the district informed them at the outset, they would have been able to obtain the requisite counseling for their daughter that would have allowed her to work through her discomfort with her natal gender, and that their relationship with their daughter would not have been harmed.
District Drags Dogs
On November 17, 2025, the parents lodged a formal objection to the district’s treatment of “Jane” and demanded that officials and staff use her given name and female pronouns when referring to her. Two weeks later, the district agreed to do so.
The parents then requested the correction of all internal and public-facing school records to reflect their daughter’s actual name and sex. The district refused to comply fully, so Liberty Counsel sent them a demand letter on March 6. Pennsbury subsequently stated that “Jane’s” real name would be used on her diploma and at the graduation ceremony. However, reads the letter, “district counsel nevertheless claimed that the district had no control over booster-club memory book references to ‘John,’ despite the booster club’s relationship to district activities and personnel.” (One suspects the response would have been different if, say, black parents had complained about a perceived racial slur in a memory book.)
In light of these responses, the parents asked Liberty Counsel to propose new policy language stating that “district employees shall not take actions to conceal a student’s gender transition from the student’s parent or legal guardian” and that parents must be informed before any such transition commences. Liberty Counsel did so on June 24. To date, the Pennsbury School Board has not even considered the proposal.
Schooling Pennsbury
Thus, the parents are taking their case to Uncle Sam, who has a say in such matters not because the Constitution gives him a say but because he unconstitutionally funds states’ public schools and therefore has leverage over them.
In their complaint, the parents argue that Pennsbury’s actions violate three federal laws regarding schools receiving federal funding and, on top of that, President Donald Trump’s executive order and federal court rulings declaring the word “sex” to mean what it always meant until the transgender movement hijacked it. They want the district to be forced to change its policy to align with their suggested policy and to notify all parents whose children were also socially transitioned without their consent.
“The deliberate concealment of gender confusion and harmful social ‘transition’ of minors ignores morality, biological reality, and parental rights,” Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. “Pennsbury School District should amend its policies to protect children and honor parental rights.”
