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FIRST ON FOX: A conservative legal group called on the Trump administration on Friday to investigate an Alaska school district over a policy that withholds gender identity information from parents.
America First Legal asked the Education and Justice departments to open inquiries into the school district, the latest to come under scrutiny for its transgender policies in the wake of a major Supreme Court ruling last month that sided with religious parents on the matter. The high court’s decision applied to California but has continued to affect school districts across the country.
AFL’s complaint centers on a policy in Hoonah City School District, a small K-12 district in Alaska, that instructs school administrators to use a student’s legal name and pronouns when communicating with parents, even if the student is going by a different name and pronouns at school.
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AFL argued that in practice, the policy “requires school staff to present one identity to parents while facilitating another at school, effectively directing them to deceive parents about their own children.”
“Hoonah City School District’s nonsensical ‘gender identity’ policies strip parents of their rights, applaud deception, and brazenly violate federal law,” AFL senior counsel Ian Prior said in a statement.
The DOJ Civil Rights Division has already signaled it is open to investigating such policies after recently opening a similar probe into Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district comprising more than half a million students.
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AFL’s complaint mirrors a similar legal threat the conservative Thomas More Society made last month against the Westwood Regional School District in New Jersey.
The legal group, which helped bring the California Supreme Court case, said it would initiate litigation if the school district did not rescind a policy that lets schools withhold students’ gender identity information from parents.
The complaints and investigations come after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked California from enforcing a policy that prevents school staff from notifying parents if their child expresses a desire to engage in gender transitioning, unless the child consents to the parents finding out. The case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, was brought by parents who argued the policy encroached on their religious freedom. The California policy also required school staff to use students’ preferred names and pronouns regardless of the parents’ wishes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with the state in the case, but the high court temporarily vacated the 9th Circuit’s order 6-3, saying the state policy was likely unconstitutional. The three liberal justices dissented.
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“The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy,” the high court’s majority had written in the unsigned opinion. “But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
California attorneys had argued that the state policy was designed to protect transgender children from allegedly abusive parents.
Peter Breen, an executive vice president with the Thomas More Society, recently told Fox News Digital he had hoped the Supreme Court’s decision “would end the practice of secret gender transitions, but what’s becoming clear to us is this is just the beginning.”
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“We are already fielding requests from other parents across the country, and we anticipate sending a lot more demand letters, unfortunately,” Breen said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Hoonah City School District and the DOJ and Ed. Dept. for comment.
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