A Maryland school district is being sued after parents accused school officials of hiding their daughter’s social gender transition and then citing district policy to justify keeping them in the dark.

America First Legal (AFL) is leading the lawsuit on behalf of anonymous parents identified as John and Jane Doe. The plaintiffs argue Anne Arundel County Public Schools’ policies violate their First and 14th Amendment rights, as well as similar provisions of the Maryland Constitution. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

The lawsuit is part of a growing wave of legal challenges targeting school districts with policies allowing staff to withhold information about a student’s gender identity from parents. It also comes months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, which America First Legal says reinforced parents’ constitutional rights over decisions involving their children.

Ian Prior, senior advisor at America First Legal and counsel for the plaintiffs, said the district ignored that precedent.

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«The school system was referring to our client’s daughter by a male name and assuming a male identity for their daughter, and they didn’t approve that. And they weren’t told of that. And when they did find out about it, and they questioned the school, they were quite frankly lied to about it,» Prior told Fox News Digital.

«They said this is not going to happen anymore. We deny consent. And the school said, ‘Well, too bad, that’s the law.’ Unfortunately, for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, that is not the law.»

Prior said the Supreme Court made clear in Mirabelli that «parents have a fundamental right to raise their children» and argued schools cannot facilitate a child’s social transition without parental notice and consent.

According to the complaint, the dispute began in December 2025 after a teacher accidentally emailed the parents using a male name for their daughter before attempting to recall the message and later claiming it had been sent to the wrong recipient. The lawsuit alleges the teacher later admitted the explanation was false and acknowledged the student had requested to be called by a male name. The parents then instructed school officials to use only their daughter’s legal name and requested records related to the school’s actions.

The complaint alleges school administrators refused those requests, citing the district’s policies and telling the parents that school staff were required to honor the student’s preferred name while at school.

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Months later, another teacher allegedly used the same male name in an email about an upcoming field trip. When the parents questioned it, the lawsuit says, the teacher initially gave a false explanation before admitting the name referred to their daughter.

According to the lawsuit, the district’s policies require staff to use students’ preferred names and pronouns and keep information about their gender identity confidential without notifying or getting permission from parents.

«It’s really unfortunate that this even has to result in litigation, because, again, the Supreme Court has been very clear about what schools can and cannot do. But what we’ve really seen throughout the country is that, in order to get schools to adhere to the Constitution and the law of the land, you have to bring them to court and get a court order demanding that they follow the law,» Prior told Fox News Digital.

The Maryland case is the latest in a series of lawsuits AFL has filed challenging school policies governing student gender identity.

Just weeks earlier, on June 22, 2025, America First Legal filed a separate federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Fairfax County Public Schools. That lawsuit alleges the district’s policy violates parents’ constitutional rights by allowing school staff to socially transition students, including using different names and pronouns at school without notifying parents in certain circumstances. The Fairfax litigation remains in its early stages.

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Prior said AFL is also pursuing similar parental rights cases in Pennsylvania and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.

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The litigation also comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to challenge school policies concerning parental notification and gender identity. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education concluded that the California Department of Education remains in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), finding that state policies pressure school officials to conceal information about students’ gender identity from parents. California has pushed back against the federal government’s conclusions and related legal challenges remain ongoing.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools declined to comment on the litigation.

China y Rusia mantienen, desde al menos 2020, un foro de cooperación militar secreto. Según una investigación del semanario alemán Der Spiegel, el diario francés Le Monde y el medio online The Insider, funcionarios y altos mandos militares rusos y chinos mantienen regularmente foros, en los que participan industriales de defensa de los dos países, para coordinar desde sistemas antimisiles comunes hasta armas de ataque.

Las instituciones de la Unión Europea y de la OTAN saben desde hace años que China coopera militarmente con Rusia, por ejemplo ayudando con componentes de doble uso, civil y militar, en el esfuerzo de guerra ruso en Ucrania. Bruselas siempre ha tenido bajo el radar esa cooperación militar y ha llegado a sancionar a empresas chinas. La OTAN lanza advertencias periódicamente y Ucrania ha mostrado a europeos y estadounidenses drones rusos con tecnología china.

Los documentos filtrados y de los que dan cuenta este jueves esos tres medios hablan de un Foro Ruso-Chino de Tecnología Militar que lleva funcionando al menos seis años bajo un régimen de secreto. Ya se habrían reunido cinco veces y la sexta sería a finales de este año en San Petersburgo.

La información es muy relevante porque es un salto adelante en la percepción que Bruselas y Washington tenían -o aseguraban tener- hasta ahora de la cooperación ruso-china, que veían sobre todo tecnológica. Los documentos aseguran, en cambio, que después de varias reuniones entre 2020 y 2022, en 2023 una reunión entre 16 representantes chinos y tres rusos sirvió para acordar el desarrollo conjunto de un sistema integrado de defensa antimisiles, capaz de interceptar misiles hipersónicos y balísticos de medio alcance (hasta 4.000 kilómetros). De lograrlo alcanzarían una capacidad que hoy sólo tienen los sistemas antimisiles estadounidenses Patriot y Thaad.

La investigación periodística explica que chinos y rusos han puesto en su punto de mira la red de satélites Starlink, propiedad del magnate Elon Musk, aliado del presidente estadounidense Donald Trump y el hombre más rico del planeta, además de enemigo de la Unión Europea y sostén de los partidos políticos de ultraderecha que quieren derruirla.

Los medios en la investigación cuentan la presentación que hicieron delegados chinos en la reunión de 2023, en la que representante de la empresa estatal china Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, plantearon la creación de una “alianza antiStarlink”. Estudiaron y supuestamente empezaron a desarrollar varias opciones, desde la interferencia electrónica hasta ciberataques pasando por la destrucción física de los satélites en órbita.

Se trata de buscar cómo neutralizar una de las ventajas más claras que tiene Ucrania en la guerra de defensa contra Rusia, la que le otorga el servicio Starlink de Elon Musk. China estima que Taiwán podría intentar usar el mismo sistema en la eventualidad de un ataque chino.

La investigación periodística cuenta, además, que uno de los aspectos más importantes de la cooperación secreta militar entre Rusia y China es precisamente cómo China está extrayendo lecciones del escenario bélico ucraniano para una hipotética guerra de conquista de Taiwán. Los funcionarios chinos extraen lecciones de Ucrania, gracias a esa cooperación con China, para entender cómo Kiev usa la defensa aérea, la guerra electrónica, los enjambres de drones y las comunicaciones por satélite. Rusia, por su parte, recibe cooperación industrial y tecnológica porque más de cuatro años de guerra muerden con fuerza en su industria militar.

Al cierre de esta nota no había reacciones oficiales de la OTAN ni de la Unión Europa. El canciller alemán Johann Wadephul dijo que la revelación era “extremadamente preocupante”. Uno de los aspectos que podrían llevar a la Unión Europea a aprobar sanciones contra Beijing, con la consiguiente guerra comercial que desataría el Gobierno chino, sería el hecho de que, según la investigación, hasta 200 operadores de drones militares rusos fueron entrenados en territorio chino.

China ya reaccionó diciendo que las conclusiones de la investigación son “calumnias”, según cables de agencias. La Unión Europea se ve ante un dilema. Su actitud desde hace meses es la de intentar no generar conflictos para mantener la relación comercial dentro de su cauce. La última reunión, a principios de la semana pasada, sirvió para que representantes comerciales chinos y europeos se dieran hasta octubre para avanzar en pactos comerciales sectoriales que eviten una guerra comercial.

FIRST ON FOX: Democrat candidate Sarah Trone Garriott, a minister and state legislator running for one of the most competitive House seats in the nation, contributed to a «resistance preaching» guide that encouraged faith leaders to combat President Donald Trump and his supporters from the pulpit.

Trone Garriott authored a chapter in a 2018 collection titled, «Preaching as Resistance: Voices of Hope, Justice, and Solidarity,» in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory — an event the book described as bringing the country «so closely to fascism.»

Responding to Trump’s presidency, «Many pastors find themselves drawn toward acts of resistance,» Phil Snider, a self-described «White male cishet pastor,» writes in the book’s introduction.

He argued that «pastors of the resistance» were working against a Trump-led coalition rooted in «White supremacy,» «exploitation,» «greed,» and «heteropatriarchy.»

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Trone Garriott, who was ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in 2008, was among that cohort as an author of the collection.

Her contribution titled, «The Gospel of Resistance,» was described as the first sermon she delivered after the 2016 election and has not been previously reported.

Trone Garriott’s involvement comes as she faces mounting scrutiny from Republicans over her previous remarks on religion and cultural issues. The GOP views the Iowa House battleground held by Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, which incorporates the state capital of Des Moines, as critical to preserving its slim majority.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the contest as a «toss-up.» Trump carried the swing district by over four points in 2024, but a recent Fox News Poll showed his favorability is now underwater in the Hawkeye State.

Trone Garriott publicly discussed helping marry a Satanist couple as a minister-in-training during a love-themed storytelling event in 2023, Fox News Digital previously reported. She also defended a Wiccan-led prayer in the state legislature and tied public displays of Christianity to political violence in a 2023 sermon.

During that talk, she criticized private schools and parental rights in education while highlighting her efforts to seek out prayers in the state legislature that were not from the «White American Christian variety.»

The Republican National Committee (RNC) sharply criticized Trone Garriott’s participation in the «resistance» preaching collection.

«The Wicked Witch of Woke strikes again and admits what we all knew — she views the pulpit as a political weapon to advance her radical agenda,» RNC spokesman Zach Kraft said in a statement to Fox News Digital. «There isn’t a far-left cause Sarah Trone Garriott hasn’t claimed to have found in the Bible and attempted to force on Iowans.»

Trone Garriott did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about why she chose to contribute to the collection or whether she agreed with the book’s introduction, which described Trump and his tens of millions of voters as rooted in racism.

The book described Trump and his tens of millions of voters as rooted in racism. (David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

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The sermon collection, described as «provocative» by its publisher, includes 30 sermons under titles that include «Transgressing the Gender Binary,» «Encountering Pharaoh — and Climate Change,» and «Wake Up and Stay Woke!»

Beyond criticism of Trump, pastors also condemned immigration enforcement, deportation policies, transphobia, and what one author calls «the worship of military-grade weaponry among the populace.»

In «When to Break the Law,» a minister urges sanctuary cities to defy the federal government and harbor illegal aliens to avoid deportation. In «Take a Knee,» the author rails against the «militarized border.» In «Overcome Evil with Good,» police departments are associated with White supremacy. In «Beloved Resistance,» the president is described as an «unrepentant sexual predator.»

Trone Garriott’s own sermon closes the collection. While less overtly political than some of the others, it was identified as the first sermon she delivered after Trump’s election.

In the sermon, Trone Garriott appears to encourage listeners who were upset by recent events, without explicitly mentioning Trump’s election win. She discusses periods when Christians felt detachment throughout history and turned to Matthew 24:36–44, a passage about Christ’s return in which he tells believers to remain ready.

Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)

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«For those who are honestly praying for the kingdoms of this world to be destroyed and Christ’s kingdom to come…for those who are yearning to go with Christ wherever that may lead…for those hoping for new life…this is the good news,» she wrote.