Trump's Trans Kid Story Doesn't Add Up
The president said a Florida school "secretly socially transitioned" a 13-year-old. Emails suggest otherwise.
The Trump administration is "working to protect our children from toxic ideologies in our schools," President Donald Trump told the nation during a televised address to Congress last night. He went on to share a story about January Littlejohn and her husband, Jeffrey, who allegedly "discovered that their daughter's school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl," conspiring to "deceive January and her husband while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and…they/them pronouns."
The school did this "all without telling January," Trump reiterated, before touting his administration's efforts to make public schools less friendly to "transgender ideology."
Trump immediately pivoted to talking about how he would help pass a bill to criminalize "sex changes on children," blurring the lines between mild actions like calling students by their preferred pronouns and major medical interventions of the sort that are exceedingly rare.
But that's not the only way that Trump's comments were misleading.
In Trump's telling, the school was both pushing gender nonconformity on the Littlejohn's child and doing so without the parents' knowledge. But emails obtained by media outlets years ago suggest that not only did the parents know this was going on, it was they who first broached the subject with the school and suggested that staff follow their child's lead on name and pronouns.
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Emails Tell a Different Story
The reason that some outlets discovered this years ago is because last night's Trump speech wasn't the first time the Littlejohns have been used by politicians pushing an intolerant agenda. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis "repeatedly pointed to the [Littlejohn family] to explain the need for a controversial new law, dubbed by critics the 'Don't Say Gay' bill, that bans schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity," CNN reported in April 2022.
"We had a mother from Leon County, [Florida,] and her daughter was going to school and some people in the school had decided that the daughter was really a boy and not a girl. So they changed the girl's name to a boy's name, had her dress like a boy and on doing all this stuff, without telling the mother or getting consent from the mother," DeSantis reportedly said at a news conference back then, referring to the Littlejohns. "First of all, they shouldn't be doing that at all. But to do these things behind the parents' back and to say that the parents should be shut out. That is wrong."
Like Trump's story last night, DeSantis' tale suggested that the school was for some reason grooming this child to be transgender and doing so without any conversations with the parents.
But emails obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat in response to a public records request, and later obtained by CNN, show that January Littlejohn wrote the school in 2020 to announce that her child wanted to use different pronouns and go by a gender-ambiguous nickname.
"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 is currently identifying as non-binary," January Littlejohn wrote to a teacher at her child's school in August 2020, per CNN. "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 this information should be shared with other teachers. Littlejohn reportedly responded: "Whatever you think is best or [redacted] can handle it herself."
In another email, Littlejohn told the teacher "I sincerely appreciate your support. I'm going to let her take the lead on this," according to CNN.
These do not sound like the words of someone who was kept in the dark about her child's social transitioning at school. Nor do these emails seem to suggest that the school was pushing unwanted "gender ideology" on the child.
The Littlejohns' Lawsuit Dismissed
The emails that January Littlejohn exchanged with her child's teacher do not tell the whole story, mind you.
The Littlejohn family would eventually sue the school board, superintendent, and assistant superintendent of Leon County Schools, the district in which their child was enrolled, and a counselor and assistant principal at Deerlake Middle School, where the child attended school. The Littlejohns objected to the school's development of a Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Student Support Plan—indicating the child's preferred name, pronouns, bathroom, and sleeping arrangements on school trips—and its decision not to immediately tell them about it when the child requested they not be told.
"Littlejohn claims that when she asked the school for more information, the school denied her access to meetings and information and tried to conceal information regarding her child," according to CNN.
But whatever did or did not happen regarding this plan, the story still bears little resemblance to the one told by DeSantis, in which it was the school who "decided" the child was not a girl and "had her dress like a boy." Or to the story told by Trump, in which the Littlejohn parents were "deceive[d]" by the school and totally ignorant of anything going on.
According to the school district, the child's situation was "handled together in partnership with clear communication" with the Littlejohn parents. "The family clearly instructed the school staff via email to allow their child to 'take the lead on this' and to do 'whatever you think is the best,'" Chris Petley, Leon County Schools communications coordinator, told CNN in 2022.
In December 2022, a federal judge dismissed the Littlejohns' lawsuit.
"At its core, this is a case where Defendants allegedly (i) let [the child, going in the suit by A.G.] voluntarily chose a preferred name and pronouns that they knew [the Littlejohn parents] didn't agree with, (ii) didn't seek [the Littlejohn parents] input regarding A.G.'s name choice, pronoun choice, or other elements of A.G.'s Support Plan, (iii) didn't notify [the Littlejohn parents] about the … Support Plan because they knew [the parents] would not agree with A.G.'s decision, and (iv) dragged their feet in disclosing the … Support Plan to the [parents]," wrote Mark Eaton Walker, chief judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, in his decision. "This is not a case where Plaintiffs allege that their child was singled out by Deerlake staff and forced to adopt a support plan against their child's will. Nor is this a case where Plaintiffs allege that Deerlake staff publicly accused Plaintiffs of abusing their child or tried to cause Plaintiffs to lose custody of their child. This is also not a case where Deerlake staff were forewarned that a child's support plan was exacerbating the child's mental health concerns, but they pursued it regardless of such warning, resulting in the child's self-harm or suicide."
Even "accepting all of [the Littlejohns'] allegations as true and construing them in a light most favorable to [them], Plaintiffs do not state a substantive due process claim," Judge Walker concluded.
The Littlejohns have since appealed, and that case is pending.
Whose Parental Rights?
When and how schools should notify parents in situations like this is not always a clear-cut issue.
To me, it seems logical that schools would discuss things like preferred-pronoun changes and bathroom selection with the parents of younger students but stop automatically doing so with older students, such as those in high school and junior high. It also seems reasonable that exceptions might be made—in either direction—depending on particular circumstances.
The issue of field trip sleeping arrangements for older students gets a little trickier, and probably also lends itself to situational rather than one-size-fits-all decision making with regard to whether parents must be apprised.
Reasonable people might have different viewpoints here—but that's not really what Republicans are arguing about.
The recent political focus on transgender and nonbinary students and their parents isn't simply about field-trip sleeping arrangements, or giving parents a heads-up on bathroom choices. It isn't merely about keeping parents informed or debating the finer points of notification policies.
Conservative officials, in the Trump administration and state governments, keep angling to forbid schools from accepting transgender and nonbinary students' preferred identities—sometimes unless their parents give the school express permission, and sometimes not even then. They've been pushing to reject accommodations and acknowledgment for students who identify as nonbinary. Some states are passing laws to ban schools from letting students use bathrooms that don't correspond to the sex they were born, even when their parents approve.
Republicans say this is about parental rights…but apparently that doesn't include the rights of parents who support their children who identify as trans or nonbinary. It starts to seem a lot less about actually protecting parental choice and family privacy and more about imposing a specific "gender ideology" of their own on everyone.
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