There’s nothing more precious to a mother and father than their child. There’s nothing they wouldn’t sacrifice to help their son or daughter. They are uniquely responsible for helping guide him or her through life’s joys and sorrows.
When parents place their child in the care of others—a school, a daycare, a church youth group—they do not surrender their God-given parental rights. And they rightly expect to receive transparency and truth about what is happening to their son or daughter.
But what happens when that trust is broken? What happens when an ideologically-driven policy directs teachers and school officials to hide information from parents?
What happens when a school district begins to see parents as an obstacle to evade? That’s what one Michigan family had to find out—the hard way.
Family reaches out for help with struggling daughter
In the fall of 2020, early in the school year, Dan and Jennifer Mead began to notice that their daughter was struggling. They received reports from her teacher that she was falling behind in class. Her parents knew that something was wrong.
Jennifer noticed that her daughter didn’t seem like herself. The Meads became concerned that she was dealing with anxiety and depression.
As her struggles became worse, Dan and Jennifer sought help for their daughter from a counselor. Like any loving parents, they made clear to their daughter that no matter what, they would continue to be in her corner—they would love her and help her navigate any academic or personal challenge she faced.
Following Christmas break in their daughter’s sixth-grade year, Dan and Jennifer also reached out to the Rockford Public School District for help and began to work closely with the school to address their daughter’s needs. The school counselor they connected with initially focused on helping their daughter with academic struggles, but over time, those conversations began to encompass more.
Dan and Jennifer were grateful for the counselor’s help during a difficult season of life and valued the connection their daughter had made. They knew their daughter felt safe with the counselor, and Jennifer came to trust her as a friend. They even met over the summer for ice cream with their daughters.
That bond was built on trust and was reinforced by the seemingly regular and transparent communication that Dan and Jennifer had with the counselor.
That trust would be shattered, however, when Dan and Jennifer discovered a terrible secret.
Deception and betrayal as policy
After meeting regularly for over a year, the counselor contacted Jennifer to voice concerns about her daughter. To support their daughter, the Meads were open in sharing information about their family with the counselor.
But little did the Meads know, school officials were not so open. Instead, school officials were actively deceiving them.
For months, school officials had been secretly treating the Meads’ daughter as a boy, using male pronouns and a masculine name. They never told Dan and Jennifer. And they actively hid it from them.
In interactions with the Meads, staff used her correct name and pronouns, concealing the truth about how they were treating the Meads’ daughter while at school. School officials also altered records being sent home to the parents for the same purpose.
The Meads only found out what was happening because a staff member revealed the truth by accident.
The truth was that school officials—including the counselor they had put so much trust in—were “socially transitioning” Dan and Jennifer’s daughter.
The school was putting the Meads’ daughter on a path that so often leads to the irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and harmful surgeries that remove healthy body parts.
Dan and Jennifer would soon find out that the Rockford Public School District had been hiding the truth from them for months. In documents and communications with Dan and Jennifer, officials had been removing references to their daughter’s new name and pronouns.
But thankfully, this deceit didn’t go on forever. At an October 2022 meeting, a district employee inadvertently gave Dan a document that included comments from a teacher using the school’s masculine name and male pronouns to refer to his daughter.
At first, it seemed like an innocent mistake. Jennifer noticed the comment and emailed the district to find out more. She thought they might have received a report for someone else’s child.
But that same district employee would later admit that she had changed all other references to the masculine name in the report to hide what the school was doing.
The Meads were in disbelief.
When they found out the district had shattered their trust, Dan and Jennifer asked the district to halt the “social transition” and stop using a masculine name and male pronouns for their daughter.
But the principal at their daughter’s school confirmed that the district would continue doing what it was doing.
It wasn’t one rogue official or a misapplied guideline. This was the district’s policy, employed as intended. When Dan and Jennifer’s daughter needed help, the district took advantage of her confusion and the trust her parents had in school officials.
Challenging unlawful policies to protect parents, kids
When the Meads realized what was happening to their daughter and that they had been lied to, they were devastated. They were eventually forced to remove their daughter from the school altogether to protect her from policies designed to drive a wedge between parents and their children.
Based on their experience, Dan and Jennifer knew they didn’t want other parents to go through what they had. That’s why they reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom.
With ADF’s help, the Meads are challenging the school district for its blatant disregard of their rights in a case that could reverberate well beyond Michigan’s borders.
In December 2023, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on the family’s behalf.
By deliberately hiding important information from the Meads about their daughter, the Rockford Public School District violated their parental and other constitutional rights.
No school district should be making important decisions on behalf of parents, much less concealing those decisions from them. Parents know their children better than anyone, and they have the constitutional right and moral responsibility to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and healthcare.
That’s at the heart of Dan and Jennifer’s decision to challenge the district’s policy—standing up for their daughter and the basic rights of parents.
Today, the Meads’ daughter is doing better. Jennifer and Dan feel like they are seeing their daughter come back from her struggles. She is succeeding at school, and her future is bright.
But were it not for a providential mistake that revealed the truth, the Meads’ story might have ended in a far darker place. That’s why their lawsuit is important: to help put a stop to secret transition policies in other school districts.
Will you help support their case—and so many others like it—with a special gift today? Your generosity and prayers empower courageous families like the Meads to challenge harmful policies.
