The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of Florida parents whose daughter was “socially transitioned” without their knowledge.
The court released an orders list on Monday which showed they had declined to consider Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County.
There was no comment accompanying the denial.
As a result, the decision of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit will stand, per a report from The Christian Post.
According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was representing the Littlejohn family, staff with Leon County Schools in Florida had met secretly with their 13-year-old daughter.
They made a “gender support plan” that allowed the girl “to use pronouns inconsistent with her sex,” the legal advocacy group described.
“The plan also indicated that school staff should begin using her new name and ‘they/them’ pronouns when referring to the child at school, but would use the child’s given name and ‘she/her’ when talking to her parents, keeping the parents in the dark about what was going on with their daughter at school,” the organization added.
January Littlejohn, the girl’s mother, told The Christian Post in a previous interview that she believed school staff members were “colluding with my daughter to deceive us so that we would never have known she was going by an alternate name.”
She said other parents found their children in similar situations.
The mother noted that the parents “are really scared to speak out or they don’t feel like they can speak out because it would jeopardize the very fragile relationship they have with their child who’s experiencing distress related to their gender.”
She also believes “socially transitioning” a child is the “first step toward medical transitioning.”
Parents must involve themselves in “any discussion with their child that could impact the short-term and long-term mental and physical well-being of their child, whether it’s this issue or any issue,” Littlejohn continued.
As noted by Courthouse News, U.S. Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion from the 11th Circuit panel that the school’s actions did not “shock the conscience.”
“To the contrary, they sought to help the child,” she contended.
“Under these circumstances, even if the Littlejohns felt that defendants’ efforts to help their child were misguided or wrong, the mere fact that the school officials acted contrary to the Littlejohns’ wishes does not mean that their conduct ‘shocks the conscience’ in a constitutional sense.”
January Littlejohn attended a joint address of Congress last year as a guest of President Donald Trump.
The case was featured by Trump as a result of the “toxic ideologies” his administration was seeking to oppose.
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