Law to Protect Disabled Kids Actually Helps Parents Defend Their Rights Amid Transgender Activism

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The law firm America First Legal released a parental rights toolkit Tuesday, explaining how a law that protects the rights of disabled children also helps parents defend their rights when schools adopt policies hiding a child’s transgender identity from parents.

“Parents hold the fundamental and constitutionally-protected right to direct the upbringing of their children, and that includes authority over their children’s education,” Julie Alexa Strauss, general counsel at America First Legal, said in a statement on the new toolkit, exclusively provided first to the Daily Signal. “Yet today, radicalized school personnel are exploiting their access to children, particularly vulnerable children with disabilities—often behind closed doors—to push ideological agendas.”

“Congress gave parents of children with special needs powerful legal rights, but too many families are never made aware of just how extensive those protections are,” Strauss added. “AFL’s IDEA Toolkit helps parents understand those rights, empowers parents to assert their authority, and holds schools accountable when they overstep the law.”

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, first passed in 1975 but renamed in 1990, guarantees children with disabilities access to a free, appropriate public education.

America First Legal argues that IDEA “also gives parents extensive authority over evaluations, educational services, school records, and individualized education programs.”

The law firm states that its “IDEA toolkit arms parents with an arsenal of tools designed to ensure that they, not the government, remain in control of their children’s education.”

The toolkit comes amid renewed attention to parental rights legal battles, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld parents’ rights to direct the upbringing of their children.

‘Uniquely Vulnerable’

The toolkit warns that “students receiving special education services are uniquely vulnerable to ideological manipulation by school personnel due to the frequent and close nature of their interactions with radicalized teachers, administrators, and service providers.”

Students with autism receive IDEA services at higher rates than the general population, and multiple studies have found elevated rates of autism diagnoses among those diagnosed with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite one’s sex).

AFL’s toolkit notes that when disabled students receive services such as individualized instruction, counseling, and psychological services, “many of these services are provided outside the regular education classroom, out of sight of other students, teachers, and parents.”

“This creates an environment ripe for ideological influence,” the toolkit warns. It notes that the National Association of Social Workers, the American School Counselor Association, and the National Education Association have adopted policy positions endorsing “gender-affirming care” for minors, “encouraging school staff to ‘affirm’ children’s gender identities—including facilitating social transitions—without explicitly requiring parental knowledge or consent.”

Parental Rights in IDEA

Yet the IDEA secures important rights for parents, the firm notes.

According to AFL, IDEA guarantees parental consent for evaluations and services, participation in IEP development, access to records, notice of proposed changes, and the ability to revoke consent for services. Importantly, parents have the right to be part of the team that determines if their child has a disability in the first place.

Parents have many options if schools violate their rights, the document adds. Parents can demand mediation from the state or local education agency or a due process hearing before the agency. They have the right to appeal a local education agency’s due process hearing to the state education agency. Ultimately, parents can bring civil action if even the state deprives them of their rights.

While Congress passed the IDEA to secure educational rights for children, the law also secures parental rights, according to AFL.

“Parents, not government officials, should decide what’s best for their children,” Strauss, the general counsel, said. “AFL will not stand by and allow activists disguised as educators to manipulate our most vulnerable kids.”