Foote v. Ludlow is about whether a public school violates parents’ constitutional rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, the school encourages a student to transition to a new “gender” or participates in that process.
Case Status
- Denied review
ERLC Brief
- Amicus brief joined by ERLC
What is this case about?
In 2022, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri filed a federal lawsuit against their children’s school district for adopting a policy that requires teachers to use a student’s “preferred name” and “chosen pronouns” without parental notification. Foote and Silvestri’s lawsuit argues that Ludlow School Committee in Massachusetts is violating parental rights to direct the upbringing of their children and make the best medical and mental health decisions for their children.
Ludlow School Committee attempts to justify the policy saying it is needed to ensure safe and inclusive learning spaces.
Both the district and appellate courts dismissed the lawsuit saying the parents’ allegations of using chosen names and pronouns does not mean the school is providing medical treatment. Further, the lower courts dismissed the case because the Supreme Court has never indicated parents have the right to control a school’s administrative decisions on how to best address student needs.
What is the question in the case?
Whether a public school violates parents’ constitutional rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, the school encourages a student to transition to a new “gender” or participates in that process.
Why does it matter to Southern Baptists?
Southern Baptists desire to see children protected from a culture that has bought into a sexual revolution intending to separate them from God’s good design for their lives. In the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, we celebrate God’s gift of gender for our good. Southern Baptists have explicitly expressed their condemnation of the “harmful and often irreversible ‘gender transition’ experiments on vulnerable minors and young adults” (2023 resolution, “On Opposing ‘Gender Transitions‘”).
Parents do not surrender their rights to their children when they drop their child off in the carpool line. Shameful attempts by public schools to deceive parents and children alike in furtherance of a radical gender ideology is both unconstitutional and an affront to the God-ordained institution of the family.
Post-oral arguments
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