A court ruled against a Wisconsin school district policy that allowed teachers and officials to address students by new names and pronouns without parental consent.

Waukesha Circuit County Court sided with two sets of parents in a Tuesday ruling against a Kettle Moraine School District policy that allowed school officials to refer to students by new names and pronouns without parental consent. The court ruled that the policy violated parental rights, saying parents should know about any changes.

“The School District could not administer medicine to a student without parental consent. The School District could not require or allow a student to participate in a sport without parental consent. Likewise, the School District cannot change the pronoun of a student without parental consent without impinging on a fundamental liberty interest of the parents,” wrote Circuit Court Judge Michael Maxwell.

The case began after two sets of parents, represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and the Alliance Defending Freedom, sued the school district in November 2021 over the policy. 

One of the sets of parents said they took their 12-year-old daughter out of the Kettle Moraine school system after finding out that her teachers were referring to their daughter by a male name and using male pronouns without their knowledge. The girl ended up deciding to stop identifying as a boy. 

After protesting the matter, the parents say that the school cited its policy that said educators did not need parental consent to use a different pronoun or name than those given by the parents. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP

“The School District abrogated the parental rights of [the parents] on how to medically treat [their child] when the district decided to socially affirm [the child] at school despite [the parents] requesting it does not. Through its policy of disregarding parental wishes on a medical or health related decision and with how fast questioning one’s gender can arise, [the parents] are at real risk of being harmed,” the court decision said. 

Lawyers for ADF and WILL celebrated the decision, saying it was a “major win for parental rights.” 

“The court confirmed that parents, not educators or school faculty, have the right to decide whether a social transition is in their own child’s best interests. The decision should be a warning to the many districts across the country with similar policies to exclude parents from gender transitions at school,” WILL deputy counsel Luke Berg said.

A longtime volunteer child advocate for the King County, Washington, Superior Court said she was dismissed after refusing to say she would encourage children under the age of 12 to undergo life-altering gender surgeries and hormone treatments. 

The child advocate, who requested to remain anonymous, told conservative radio host Jason Rantz that for the past seven years, she had worked for the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Program, which recruits and trains people to represent the best interests of children between the ages of 0-11. Rantz reported that the child advocate was recently forced to undergo new training after taking some time off and was dismissed after she said she wouldn’t be comfortable supporting a minor who wanted to undergo gender surgery.

“I am very disappointed that CASA, whom I have supported for many years, has succumbed to the extreme liberalism that is rampant today,” the volunteer told Rantz on his radio show on KTTH. “I am appalled that an organization that is supposed to protect our most vulnerable, children between the ages of 0-11, would require that its volunteers be willing to advocate for medical intervention that would alter the natural gender of children.”

A CASA spokesperson told Rantz that while those who volunteer for the program can choose a specific case, they cannot “refuse to serve a category of children.” 

“Among the commitments made by CASA volunteers in their oath is to maintain objectivity, treat all persons with respect, fairness, and courtesy regardless of their human diversity,” the spokesperson said. “CASAs also commit to maintain an active commitment to the child for the life of the case if possible and because each child’s case is dynamic, CASAs can select a specific case but may not refuse to serve a category of children.”

The dismissed child advocate said she would never refuse to serve a child who identified as transgender, and she was surprised that her objection to gender surgery caused her to be discharged since she had always chosen the cases she wanted to take. 

“I cared about the children I advocated for and put a lot of thought and time into the decisions I made on their behalf,” she added.

Washington has pushed to protect experimental gender surgeries and hormone treatments for children, recently passing a law that shelters, or “host homes,” are not required to notify parents of a runaway child if the child claims to be fleeing parents who do not approve of a gender surgery or an abortion. Instead of reporting the runaway child to the parents, the host home is required to notify the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families. The state’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee was sued in August by America First Legal, which is seeking to stop the enforcement of the law allowing the state to hide child gender surgeries from parents.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP

When he signed the bill, Inslee said the law is a “compassionate, developmentally appropriate, and reasoned approach to support these youth as they access gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care services.”

Republicans in the Washington state Senate slammed the bill, saying, “People are overwhelmingly against SB 5599, including many LGBT+ folks. Democrats pass it anyway, allowing youth shelters to hide kids seeking ‘gender-affirming care’ from their parents.”