Wyoming Parents Suing Over School's Gender Transition Tap National Expert

The couple suing a Wyoming school district on claims that staffers worked to socially gender-transition their teen behind their backs is planning to bring a nationally known expert to trial with them.

Dr. Miriam Grossman is a physician, author and public speaker who is board-certified in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. She appeared as an expert source in the 2022 film “What Is A Woman?” and authored gender science book “Lost in Trans Nation,” among other works. Last year, she testified on the subject for the U.S House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

If the case of Sean and Ashley Willey vs. Sweetwater School District No. 1 goes to trial as is expected, Grossman will provide testimony for the parents, according to a disclosure filed Monday with the court.

She will also review and craft a report on the health, educational and other records regarding the teen’s health and the school’s handling of it, says the filing.  

Grossman is an outspoken critic of gender-transition treatments for kids.

“I wouldn’t say Grossman is alone (in her approach) by any means,” the Willeys’ attorney Ernie Trakas told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday. “But she does have the experience in treating young children, minors — and that kind of sets her apart in this case a little bit.”

The school district’s case attorney Eric Hevenor declined Tuesday to comment, citing his office’s policy against speaking to the press.

The school district’s superintendent could not be reached immediately.

An amended pretrial order filed Tuesday in the case reiterates a point Trakas made earlier: This case’s prospects of settling before trial are considered “poor.”

Back Up

The Willeys’ case is highly impactful for Wyoming.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming in April 2023, the Willeys’ federal complaint accuses Sweetwater County School District No. 1, based in Rock Springs, of enacting a policy compelling staff members to hide students’ gender transitions from parents. The complaint also says that the Willeys’ teenage daughter started going by a boy name and pronouns while attending Black Butte High School, and staffers called the teen by the male terms for months while hiding that from her parents.

The case grew even more contentious in May last year, when the Willeys alleged in a court filing that a secret phone “had been given to” the teen. When they found it, they learned that at least three teachers at the school still were calling the teen by a male name and pronouns against the parents’ wishes.

On June 30, 2023, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Scott Skavdahl blocked the school district from enforcing its 2022 policy requiring staffers to respect students’ “privacy” from parents regarding their gender identities.

In other words, the judge told the district it can’t hide students’ gender transitions from parents.

Perhaps the law allows exceptions for cases where a student is in danger, he wrote at the time, but the case at hand doesn’t show that as an issue — and the 2022 policy didn’t address that scenario either.

“There is no suggestion that such a situation existed in this case,” Skavdahl wrote.  

But Skavdahl declined in the same order to block the district from requiring teachers to use alternate names and pronouns at students’ requests. That part of the policy he left intact.

The district has generally denied the Willeys’ claims that it behaved wrongly or contrary to the U.S. Constitution.

And Here’s Some New Laws

The Wyoming Legislature passed two parental rights in education laws this year, and both roughly trace their origins to the Willeys’ case.

Senate File 9, the Parental Rights In Education Act, now requires schools to notify parents of changes to their students’ mental health.

And the lighter-handed House Bill 92, sponsored by House Speaker Pro Tempore Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, after Stith voiced concerns about the school’s “privacy” policy at a local school board meeting, specifies that parental rights in Wyoming include school communications.

Stith told other lawmakers that had his bill been in place before the incidents with the Willey family, it would have prevented the calamitous policy from going into effect.  

Lawmakers referenced the Willeys’ case frequently while discussing these two bills this winter.

Contact Clair McFarland at clair@cowboystatedaily.com

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.