OPINION:
No parents should fear that the government will seize their children because they reject radical gender ideology. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening to a Massachusetts Catholic family.
In December 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families removed a 15-year-old girl from her home because her parents would not recognize her as a boy. Their Catholic faith prohibited them from doing so. Yet school officials had been socially transitioning their daughter behind the parents’ backs.
At school, teachers and administrators used a masculine name and masculine pronouns for their daughter, and her after-school “math” lessons were covert meetings with a counselor who further encouraged her transition, all without the parents’ knowledge or consent.
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When the parents discovered this nefarious arrangement and objected, the school counselor filed a report with the Department of Children and Families, accusing the family of abuse.
Allegations of physical abuse were dropped, but a permanent restraining order remains in effect. Even though the Department of Children and Families has not found the parents guilty of child abuse, it has housed their daughter in a boys’ dormitory for nearly two years and is attempting to give her life-altering testosterone “treatment,” which a state judge has temporarily blocked while the case proceeds.
Unfortunately, this is not just one nightmare from a blue state. Similar situations have been working their way through the courts in red states for nearly a decade.
In 2021, Indiana’s Department of Child Services removed a child from his home on vague allegations of neglect and verbal abuse by his parents. The department received and investigated reports that parents were using “rude and demeaning language” toward their son regarding his asserted transgender identity.
The reports claimed that the parents’ actions were causing thoughts of self-harm and that the parents were “verbally and emotionally abusing [their son] because they do not accept [his] transgender identity.”
The Department of Child Services removed the child from his parents’ custody, ostensibly because the parents showed an “inability, refusal or neglect to provide shelter, care, and/or supervision at the present time,” and “cautioned the Parents to avoid discussing the Child’s transgender identity during visitation.”
Although the legal standard to remove a child from his home is high, once a child is in state custody, courts ask whether a proposed course of action is in the child’s best interest. That is why the Department of Child Services asked the court to allow it to retain custody, even though it later agreed to expunge its abuse and neglect claims against the parents.
The court agreed, holding that it was in the best interests of the child for the Department of Child Services to retain custody and that this forced separation would provide the family with “the structure and support they need to enable them to learn to deal constructively with their disagreement regarding Child’s transgender identity.”
In effect, then, the only way for the parents to be reunited with their son would be to set their religious beliefs aside and parrot the state’s preferred view.
In 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear the Indiana parents’ case.
However, the court has agreed to hear a related case in December and should use the opportunity to strengthen parental rights, as Advancing American Freedom has urged in its amicus brief.
In “International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson,” the court will decide whether parents can sue state agencies for policies that incentivize children to run away from their parents when the children believe their parents will not espouse leftist gender ideology.
If parents cannot sue until their child runs away and is referred for gender “treatment” without their consent, they cannot protect their children from physical harm or ideologies that conflict with their values.
The Indiana case illustrates a concerning and all-too-common strategy: alleging that parents are abusive or neglectful, removing the child from the home, dropping the allegations against the parents, but keeping the child in custody to receive affirmation of the child’s claimed gender.
It is past time to recognize that a child’s experience of gender dysphoria does not deprive parents of their right to care for and raise their children. The court should settle this issue and reaffirm that parents have a right to raise their children according to their values.
• J. Marc Wheat is general counsel at Advancing American Freedom.
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