The Supreme Court has said that parents’ right to direct the upbringing of their children is “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” it has ever recognized.

But that right is under attack in Wisconsin public school districts that have established policies catering to children’s feelings about being a boy, a girl or something else, but deliberately keep parents in the dark about what they are doing.

The Madison Metropolitan School District’s gender policy defines “gender identity” as an internal “sense of being male, female, a blend of both or neither—how individuals perceive themselves.”

Children, of course, get ideas from all sorts of places, including social media, and the number who question whether they are “born in the wrong body” is exploding.

Schools are generally in charge of matters such as curriculum or school administration. Whether a child imagines himself as a girl (which may change tomorrow as well) is an altogether different matter.

As a federal judge recently put it: “Teaching a child how to determine one’s gender identity” strikes “at the heart of parental decision making in a matter of greatest importance in their relationship with their children.”

More Wisconsin public schools not only take a student’s latest indication of gender identity at face value but have also created school policies catering to it. The Milwaukee Public Schools policy puts a student, regardless of age, in charge of who knows anything about his current gender identity, including parents.

In fact, unless official school records have been formally changed, the policy prohibits school personnel from even implying anything about “a student’s actual or perceived gender identity … when contacting parents/guardians.”

Milwaukee’s policy also says that students are allowed to dress, access restrooms and locker rooms and participate in physical education classes, clubs, sports and activities “in a manner consistent with their gender identity.”  

The Eau Claire Area School District policy is similar, permitting students to “participate in any intramural sports/extracurricular activity in a manner consistent with their gender identity.” Access to restrooms and locker rooms, the policy states, “should be allowed based on the gender identity (i.e., man, woman, trans, non-binary, etc.) expressed by the student.”

A group of parents has challenged that policy in court, and their case is pending on a petition for review at the U.S. Supreme Court.

These gender policies create jarring inconsistencies with how school districts handle far less significant matters. Milwaukee’s public schools, for example, require that a “separate parental permission slip must be obtained for each field trip.”

At the same time, its gender policies allow students to “participate in an overnight field trip and utilize facilities and accommodations that correspond with their gender identity.”

Since students can keep their parents from knowing about their gender identity, there’s no way to ensure that Johnny’s parents understand that he might be bunking with the girls when asked for permission for an overnight excursion.

Wisconsin public schools are not alone in establishing these policies. Nearly 1,100 school districts across the country, with 11.5 million students attending 19,600 schools, have joined the gender revolution.

And it’s about to get worse. A sweeping new rule by the Biden administration’s Department of Education will push schools even harder to impose the government’s gender ideology on students and force parents to get on board or be ignored.

This rule reworks Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs receiving federal funds. For more than 50 years, Title IX has created and expanded opportunities for women and girls. This new rule, however, redefines “sex” to include “gender identity,” something Congress certainly did not intend when enacting the law more than five decades ago.

The rule also redefines “harassment” so that staff and teachers could face disciplinary action if they “misgender” a student. This massive federal mandate carries the implied threat that billions of dollars in federal funds could be revoked if schools don’t knuckle under and enforce the Biden administration’s gender ideology.

Whether at the school district, state or federal level, the government is pushing parents aside and imposing its preferred gender ideology, invading the realm that has traditionally belonged to parents. In fact, policies that exclude parents violate their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children.

It’s time for parents to fight back against policies in their children’s schools, oppose state laws that allow those policies and speak out against federal rules that promote a divisive agenda at their expense.