In Maine, where gender and queer theories reign supreme, at least 57 of its 192 school districts have policies that exclude parents from knowing whether their children start identifying as transgender.
According to documents reviewed by The Federalist and obtained by Parents Defending Education through public records requests, a significant portion of Maine’s public school districts — including its most populous ones — hide students’ critical medical and social information from parents if they are unwilling to allow their child to “transition” genders.
The school districts are potentially putting at risk the lives of their students — and at the very least their mental and physical health — by hiding the information from the parents, as allowing children to pursue such delusions is a dangerous experiment pushed only by the most radical predators and not backed by medical science.
“Maine is a state that has gone all in on gender ideology in K-12 schools,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for PDE, told The Federalist. “We see it in these policies to knowingly withhold information from parents about their own child’s gender identity at school and we see it in the governor’s insistence that males be allowed to participate and compete in girls’ sports. It’s all indefensible as well as wildly unpopular among voters, regardless of their political party.”
The districts’ policies add to the hot water Maine has recently found itself in, as intransigent behavior by the state’s Democrat governor, Janet Mills, has resulted in a federal civil rights investigation over the state allowing boys to compete against girls in sports. The state could lose $250 million in federal education funding if it is found to be violating civil rights law.
That investigation came on the heels of Trump administration guidance directing school districts to get rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, including those based on radical gender theory. Maine’s parental exclusion policies appear to violate an executive order signed by President Donald Trump reestablishing the importance of parental oversight over their children in schools after significant damage had been done during the Biden administration.