A Rock Springs couple is suing the school board of their School District as well as 4 administrative officials after learning that the District actively and without their knowledge helped their daughter socially transition to a boy. The Cowboy State Daily reports that Sean and Ashley Willey filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming on Thursday. The lawsuit asserts that the District took away their parental and due process rights, familial privacy rights, and religious rights. Mother Ashley Willey, who is a teacher in the District, also asserts that the District took away her right to the free exercise of religion and right to free speech. The Cowboy State Daily report shares that their daughter has a history of trauma and has been diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD related to childhood trauma. She has a 504 plan which requires the school to involve her parents in her mental health treatment and the parents have taken their daughter to a counselor for years for professional help. Ashley Willey alleges in the lawsuit that the District Superintendent told her that teachers are not to tell parents about students’ requests to go by different names and pronouns and that at the start of the 2022 -2023 school year the teachers were required to sign a policy requiring them to call students by their preferred names and pronouns or risk discipline. The Willeys allege that no one at the school said anything to them about their daughter’s transition for at least 6 months. This lawsuit is among others nationally.
