Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a parental rights activist who dubiously claims her child’s middle school helped her child secretly transition. She has now petitioned the Supreme Court to take her case.

Twenty-one additional state attorneys general have signed the brief in support of January Littlejohn, who, in 2022, sued the Leon County School District and staff members at Deer Lake Middle School for allowing her 13-year-old child to use they/them pronouns and go by the “masculine” nickname “J” without informing her.

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J began exploring their gender identity during the 2020-21 school year. At the time, the school district was using a 2018 guide that warned outing a student to their parents poses a risk to the student’s well-being. It allowed for a support plan that gave students a say in whether or not they want to be outed to their parents. J chose not to be.

Uthmeier’s brief claims government officials across the United States “are fundamentally altering the upbringing of children and keeping parents in the dark.” 

“Dizzying numbers of school districts and a growing number of states have passed similar ‘secret transition’ laws and ordinances without any concerns for parental rights,” the brief states. Utheier is referring to policies that ban the forced outing of students to their parents.

These policies do not involve schools encouraging students to be trans or transition, but rather to support any students who willingly communicate that their gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth and to allow the student to choose when to share that private information with their parents. For some students with anti-trans parents, telling them could be dangerous. 

The brief also decries the concept of social transitioning and negates the existence of trans identities altogether, stating that a parent’s right to decide what’s best for their child, “is only more pressing when the ideology pushed by the schools ignores basic reality about the two sexes and further confuses innocent and impressionable children.”

Littlejohn’s case was a major motivation for the passage of Florida’s infamous Don’t Say Gay bill, which severely limited the way LGBTQ+ issues could be addressed in classrooms and which also inspired copycat legislation across the country.

Supporters of the Don’t Say Gay law use stories like Littlejohn’s to argue that schools are violating parents’ rights by teaching that LGBTQ+ people exist – which conservatives have been calling “grooming” – or by somehow forcing kids to be transgender. They argue that the law is required to stop schools from exposing children to ideas that their parents don’t agree with, and they use stories like Littlejohn’s to show that this is a problem.

But there is one problem: Littlejohn’s story may not be true. 

While there isn’t much public information about her case, emails that have been made public quite clearly show that Littlejohn, in fact, asked the school to use they/them pronouns for her nonbinary child.

“This has been an incredibly difficult situation for our family and her father and I are trying to be as supportive as we can,” she wrote in an email obtained by CNN. “She is currently identifying as non-binary. She would like to go by the new name [redacted] and prefers the pronouns they/them. We have not changed her name at home yet, but I told her if she wants to go by the name [redacted] with her teachers, I won’t stop her.”

The teacher asked if she could share the email with other teachers.

In a later email, Littlejohn wrote: “Whatever you think is best or [redacted] can handle it herself.”

“This gender situation has thrown us for a loop. I sincerely appreciate your support. I’m going to let her take the lead on this,” she wrote in another email from the same day.

Nevertheless, Littlejohn, a registered Republican, eventually sued the school district in this case. She claims that school officials met with her child and created a Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Student Support Plan in accordance with district policy without consulting her. Leon County Schools, the district Littlejohn’s child is in, said that fewer than 10 students of the 33,000 in the district have such a support plan.

A spokesperson for the district said that they thought they were working “with clear communication” from Littlejohn, but then “outside entities became involved.” The “outside entities” they referred to include the Child & Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC), an anti-transgender legal organization based in Georgia that’s representing Littlejohn in the lawsuit.

Littlejohn has since been a vocal trans rights opponent and aligned herself with hate groups like Florida-made Moms for Liberty. 

In March, a federal court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss her suit.

The school officials named in the case “did not force the Littlejohns’ child to do anything at all,” Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “And perhaps most importantly, defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child.”

“Even if the Littlejohns felt that defendants’ efforts to help their child were misguided or wrong, the mere fact that the school officials acted contrary to the Littlejohns’ wishes does not mean that their conduct ‘shocks the conscience’ in a constitutional sense,” Rosenbaum wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Kevin C. Newsom said he considered the actions taken by the school district officials “shameful.” But the question at hand, he wrote, was “whether it was unconstitutional.”

“If I were a legislator, I’d vote to change the policy that enabled the defendants’ efforts to keep the Littlejohns in the dark,” he wrote. “But — and it’s a big but — judges aren’t just politicians in robes, and they don’t (or certainly shouldn’t) just vote their personal preferences.”