Illinois has Secret Gender Transition Policies for School Students Still in Place
Letter of warning sent to 4 states, including Illinois

Illinois is now one of four states where school districts have adopted policies that intentionally keep parents in the dark when a child asks to socially transition at school. According to the Liberty Justice Center’s analysis, districts in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Washington have implemented procedures that allow students to change their names, pronouns, or gender identity at school without notifying their parents. These policies are not accidental—they are written, deliberate, and carried out with the approval of district leadership, even though they directly affect a child’s wellbeing and family relationships.
The Liberty Justice Center warns that these secrecy policies violate parents’ federal rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which protect a parent’s authority to direct the upbringing and care of their children. FERPA also requires schools to provide parents access to education records, and any documentation of a student’s gender transition—such as name‑change requests or pronoun‑change forms—qualifies as an education record. By concealing these transitions, Illinois districts are not only withholding critical information about a child’s mental and emotional state, but they may also be violating federal law.
For families in Illinois, this means school officials may be making significant identity‑related decisions about children without parental knowledge or involvement. The Liberty Justice Center has urged the Illinois Attorney General to immediately instruct districts to stop hiding these transitions and to comply with federal law. Until that happens, Illinois remains one of the few states where parents must actively fight for transparency about something as fundamental as their child’s identity at school.
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