Colorado parents sue over state law and school policy regarding transgender students

An Adams County couple is suing the State of Colorado, the Department of Education, and the 27J School District.

They say all three violated their constitutional rights by encouraging their daughter to transition to a different gender without their knowledge or consent.

At issue is a new state law that requires schools to use the preferred name and pronoun of students who are transitioning to a different gender, and a policy at 27J Schools that prevents high schools from notifying parents without a student's consent, noting, in some cases, telling parents puts kids at risk.

But the parents who filed the lawsuit say not only should they be notified but, they have a right to be notified. The parents - who go by John and Jane Doe in the lawsuit - claim their 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and anxiety when she turned to a counselor at Brighton High School for help, telling the counselor she had "feelings of transgender identification".

They say the counselor encouraged their daughter to begin using a non-female name and pronouns at school and to receive mental health treatment through a state portal called i-Matter, where they say a therapist discussed hormone therapy and a mastectomy. 

"It happened all in secret for months and months without our clients knowing," says Eric Sell, one of the attorneys representing the parents.

Sell says the state law and school policy are unconstitutional, "What we're arguing is parents have the constitutional right to consent and be informed of treatment that the government is providing. This isn't something that the schools should be doing on an ad hoc basis at the child's direction." 

The lawsuit hinges on the Fourteenth Amendment which, according to the complaint, protects the rights of parents "to direct and control the upbringing of their children... including decisions regarding... treatment that can have serious life-long consequences."

And the First Amendment, which it says protects the right of "family relationships without undue interference by the state".

John McHugh, an attorney who specializes in LGBTQ cases, says kids too have rights, "There have been federal courts, circuit and district courts across the country that recognizes that students have privacy rights, and those privacy rights include the right to keep certain information from their parents." 

Mardi Moore with Rocky Mountain Equality - an LGBTQ non-profit in Boulder - says sometimes sharing that information can pose a risk to a kid's safety, "Not everybody is a great parent. Kids are put at risk at home on a regular basis. Why create more risk and more harm?"

Sell says there's already a process to deal with parents who pose a risk to their child, "If it doesn't rise to the level of going to the child services system, then you shouldn't just keep parents out of process totally." 

If successful, the lawsuit would impact the privacy of gender-transitioning students only.

McHugh says that's discrimination, "You can't have a rule that says just for transgender students we are going to require this type of information to be disclosed but for everybody else we're fine with not mandatory disclosing it."

According to the lawsuit, after seeing a private therapist, the now 16-year-old girl regrets wanting to transition to a different gender and identifies as a female again.

Gessler Blue LLC and the Center for American Liberty filed the lawsuit in federal court in Denver. Scott Gessler is a former Republican Secretary of State in Colorado and represented former President Donald Trump in Colorado's ballot access case that went the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. 

The Center for American Liberty is a conservative non-profit founded by Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, National Committeewoman of the Republican National Committee for California.