In 2021, at just 14-years-old, a young girl named Sage Blair began a so-called “social transition” where she identified as male at school and used the male restroom. This decision was facilitated by and hidden from her parents by her school counselors. As a result, Sage went on to suffer assault, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and even the loss of her parents as legal guardians.
Thankfully, Sage is now reunited with her mother and father. She also identifies as her biological sex.
The abuse that Sage endured, unknown to her parents, who were powerless to help her, feels especially poignant now. Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocked a California law that prohibited educators from sharing a child’s gender identity with their parents.
Advocates of the law told students that their gender identity is personal, and that nobody had the right to know it, “including your parents.” Opponents challenged the law as unconstitutional and an attack on both religious freedom and parental rights.
California is not the only state in recent years where school officials have decided that they know better than parents when it comes to gender ideology. Across the country, individuals who have known kids for mere months, weeks, or even hours quietly participate in life-altering, often irreversible decisions for children without informing parents.
These officials hold a dogged commitment to gender ideology that, unfortunately, triumphs over the safety of children, let alone respect for parental rights. These individuals aren’t responsible for the long-term consequences of such decisions; they don’t love these children and innately want what’s best for them; they won’t comfort a distraught child years down the line when they are devastated that they are infertile, mutilated, or otherwise regret their decision – all of that will be navigated by parents.
Unsurprisingly, allowing these individuals to dictate the health of children they don’t know has resulted in repeated tragedies in recent years.
One case up for consideration at the Supreme Court involves a 13-year-old girl in Florida, whose school administrators allegedly encouraged her down the gender dysphoria pipeline and compiled an entire ‘gender support plan,’ without notifying her parents. These administrators allegedly offered the girl the option of using the men’s bathroom – a shockingly irresponsible place to allow a 13-year-old girl. When her mother, January Littlejohn, asked for information about these private meetings with her daughter, school officials refused to divulge.
The Littlejohns’ daughter is no longer confused about her gender, but the damage her school’s anti-parent policies enabled is still raw. According to Mrs. Littlejohn, the “wedge” that administrators drove between them and their daughter took “years to repair.”
Similarly, California parents involved in the case decided by the Supreme Court,Mirabelli v. Bonta, didn’t know that school officials had socially transitioned their middle school daughter until she attempted suicide.
And in 2023, a California mother sued her local district for facilitating her fifth-grade daughter’s gender transition, which included breast-binding discussions with their eleven-year-old, as well as adopting a boy’s name. Like the many other examples of children transitioning behind their parents’ backs, this young girl eventually resolved her gender confusion and identifies as her biological sex today.
In Sage Blair’s case, keeping her parents in the dark about Sage’s social transition directly led to her being assaulted in a school bathroom. Stunningly, Sage was encouraged not to tell her parents about the incident. In other words, school administrators asked a child to keep quiet about a terrible, wholly unnecessary trauma she endured when their so-called attempt to “protect her” from her parents put her in harm's way.
When fear and confusion from this incident prompted Sage to run away, her parents were powerless to help the daughter they knew and loved. They lost contact with Sage and were not even aware that she had been kidnapped and sex-trafficked. The worst a parent can imagine happened to their precious girl, all because school administrators wanted to keep her parents in the dark and protect themselves from the consequences of their interference.
When Sage was finally rescued, she was removed from her parents’ custody and put in an all-boys home because Sage’s parents allegedly misgendered her. Scared and isolated from her parents, Sage ran away again, only to be kidnapped and trafficked a second time.
Sage was eventually rescued again. She is no longer confused about her gender, has been reunited with her parents, and did not undergo permanent gender surgery.
Sage and the many stories like hers serve as cautionary tales. By prioritizing ideology over children’s relationship with their parents, school administrators quite often endanger kids’ safety in the name of “inclusion” or “help.” Children are left to face the harrowing consequences of these decisions on their own, while the school administrators who enabled these situations will quickly absolve themselves of any responsibility for the consequences.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, which temporarily blocks the California law preventing parental notification, offers hope that the law will eventually be permanently struck down.
If it’s not, then more children in California and across the nation will be harmed by school administrators who do not have their best interests at heart.
Alleigh Marré is the executive director of American Parents Coalition and a mother of four.