Below is a political press release from Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch:
Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced the filing of an amicus brief last week in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of a mother, Aurora Regino, who is challenging a California school district’s policy of withholding information about a child’s gender identity from parents.
“As a parent, you should be able to depend on the inherent ability to direct the education and upbringing of your children," said General Fitch. “But parents increasingly feel as though they are battling against a society that seeks to displace them in this important role in the lives of their children. Schools should be supporting parents in fulfilling this role, not blocking them. With this brief, we ask the courts to reaffirm parents' fundamental rights and responsibilities by reversing this school policy that handcuffs their ability to care for their children."
In the brief, Attorney General Fitch and 21 other Attorneys General write,“Parental authority stems from parents’ duties to provide for their children’s maintenance, protection, and education and includes, as a necessary incident, the authority to perform those duties without unreasonable state interference.”
The brief continues, "A century ago, the Supreme Court grounded that common-law right—parents’ right to direct the care and custody of their minor children—in the ‘liberty’ secured by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. In doing so, the Court drew on ‘the natural duty of the parent’— which‘ [c]orrespond[ed] to the right of control’ — ‘to give his children education suitable to their station in life.’ And over the last century, the Court has reaffirmed that right time and again."
The attorneys general conclude, "When a student considers transitioning genders, parents have a fundamental, constitutional right to not be shut out of that decision making process. Yet school districts across the country, strong-armed by ideologically driven advocacy groups, have done just that, trampling on parents’ fundamental right to be informed of critical information about their child’s mental health and well-being. This Court must therefore reverse."
A copy of the brief, which was filed on November 3 in Aurora Regino v KellyStaley by the Attorneys General of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida,Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia, is available here.
To support parents, Attorney General Fitch has created a Parents’ Bill of Rights palm card and a web page to help them understand the Mississippi laws specific to their rights and responsibilities.
