A conservative Christian legal group is asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the Pennsbury School District, after a mother and father said the district violated their rights by hiding their child’s use of a different name and pronouns for nearly three school years.
After parents confronted the Bucks County district last year, it agreed to use the student’s given name at graduation, but did not change its policy to require that parents be notified of a student’s name change, according to the complaint filed last week by the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel.
“Parents have the right to know when their child is struggling with an issue, and are the first line of defense for their child,” said Richard Mast, a staff attorney with Liberty Counsel, which has brought cases favoring religious liberty and opposing LGBTQ+ rights.
A Pennsbury spokesperson declined to comment Monday. The K-12 district enrolls about 9,400 students from Yardley Borough, Lower Makefield Township, Falls Township, and Tullytown Borough.
The complaint comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated pressure on school districts over policies protecting transgender students. The U.S. Department of Justice earlier this month sued the Kansas City, Kan., school district, alleging it violated parents’ rights by facilitating “gender transitions” for students without informing their parents.
The Education Department also this month opened an investigation into a Massachusetts school district for using a male name and pronouns for a student without parents’ knowledge.
Conservative legal groups are also taking aim at schools: The Chester County Intermediate Unit this month rescinded a policy that barred staff from disclosing a student’s transgender status to parents without the student’s permission after receiving a letter from the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center, the groups said Monday. A spokesperson for the intermediate unit said it recommended the policy’s repeal “as part of its ongoing review of board policies and in recognition of the evolving legal landscape regarding transgender students.”
“There is absolutely a targeted attempt by the administration, and those aligned, to try to erase trans students from our schools and elsewhere from our culture,” said Kristina Moon, a senior attorney with the Education Law Center, a Philadelphia-based group that advocates for LGBTQ+ students. The Education Department earlier this year opened an investigation into the Great Valley School District in Chester County for a policy allowing transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports teams.
Students “need to feel safe and be able to be themselves in school,” Moon said, adding that she worries schools are getting a “very harmful message … that if you care about trans students having a sense of belonging, then you too will be targeted by the Trump administration.”
Name changes and ‘a right to privacy’
The complaint filed Sept. 21 by Liberty Counsel against Pennsbury alleges that the mother and father did not learn until the end of their child’s junior year that Pennsbury High School staff had been calling the student by a male name and pronouns since ninth grade. The complaint does not identify the student, who has since graduated, or the parents.
The district used a “false male name” and pronouns for the student in both personal interactions and electronic information systems, according to the complaint.
In one handwritten note included in the complaint, a coach wrote to the student in October 2025: “My son! My boy! It’s finally senior night! … Your high school years may not have always been like you dreamt it would be, but it’s okay! … I could not be more grateful and honored to be your coach/mom.”
While the student’s mother had heard other students referring to her child by the name during sophomore year, the student brushed it off, saying, “‘It’s just a silly name,’” Mast said in an interview Monday. The mother “didn’t pry further,” Mast said.
But when the student brought home a memory book during junior year, the mother saw a male name was used for her child, Mast said. She then went back and reviewed other memory books and saw they also used the name.
Had the parents known sooner, “they would have helped the child get the counseling she needed to be comfortable with her natal sex,” said Mast, who said the parents’ relationship with their child has suffered. “No girl should be made to feel like she is born in the wrong body.”
On Nov. 17, the parents demanded that Pennsbury use their child’s given name and female pronouns, according to the complaint. After a Dec. 1 meeting, the district said it would do so going forward, the complaint said.
But it did not fulfill all of the parents’ requests, leading Liberty Counsel to issue a demand letter on March 6, according to the complaint.
The district agreed to use the student’s given name at graduation and on the student’s diploma, but said it could not control what appeared in the memory books, because those were issued by a booster club, the complaint said.
And it has not updated its policy related to transgender students, according to the complaint. The parents had asked the district to require principals to communicate with parents before a student could be called by a different name.
The district’s policy says it will accept a student’s asserted gender identity, and “all persons, including students, have a right to privacy. This includes the right to keep private one’s transgender status or gender expansive presentation at school.”
The policy also includes a section about “parental consent” that says that if a parent or student requests a name change without proof the name has been changed legally, “the parent/guardian and student will be provided” with a form. That did not happen in this case, according to the Liberty Counsel complaint.
Pennsbury is ‘not unique’
Pennsbury’s policy is “not unique” among Philadelphia-area districts, said Jeffrey Sultanik, a solicitor for numerous districts in the region.
Lower Merion’s policy, for instance, says “school personnel should not disclose information about a (transgender or gender diverse) student’s gender identity and expression to others, including the student’s parents/guardians and/or other school personnel, unless legally required to do so or unless the student has authorized such disclosure.”
The Pennsbury complaint “may dictate what other school districts end up doing,” depending on how the Education Department responds, Sultanik said.
The complaint alleges violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting the privacy of student educational records.
The law “prohibits a federally funded school district from maintaining a policy that denies or effectively prevents a parent from inspecting and reviewing a minor child’s education records,” according to the complaint, which also alleges violations of the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment — a federal law governing surveys administered to students on sensitive topics — and Title IX.
Moon, of the Education Law Center, said “there is currently no law that schools have to notify parents about students sharing to their counselor, or a trusted teacher, that they identity as transgender.”
In cases Moon is familiar with, she said, school counselors ask students if they have told their parents about their gender identity.
“I really don’t think in the vast majority of cases, this is anything like teachers trying to avoid, or counseling students to avoid, conversations with their families,” Moon said.
