Maine's Great Salt Bay School Board doesn't want the Supreme Court anywhere near Amber Lavigne's case. The district filed its opposition brief on Feb. 23, arguing that Lavigne's petition is too vague, too procedurally improper, and simply not ready for the nation's highest court. What it cannot argue is that what happened to her daughter was acceptable.
The mother alleged school staff secretly addressed the girl as a male, a social transition, but also that an in-school social worker gave her chest binders to flatten her breasts, a medical intervention that can cause physical damage, showing its official policy was a ruse. Lavigne claims in December of 2022, her 13-year-old daughter was given a chest binder by a school social worker, and that school staff had used a different name and pronouns for her child without informing her.
The district called the episode a "misunderstanding." It has spent three years in court insisting otherwise is legally implausible.
Lavigne sued the school board in April 2023, arguing school officials violated her constitutional right to control and direct the upbringing and education of her child. A federal judge dismissed the case in 2024, concluding Lavigne had failed to establish legal claims under which the school board could be held liable. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal in July 2025, according to Just the News reports.
The district opposes Lavigne's SCOTUS petition to review the 1st Circuit ruling that dismissed her lawsuit due to "obvious alternative explanations" for the social transitioning of her 13-year-old daughter rather than an "unwritten de facto policy," arguing her allegations were too vague to be heard in court.
Let's follow the district's logic to its conclusion. A school social worker gave a 13-year-old girl a device to flatten her chest, instructed her to keep it from her mother, and referred to her by a different name and male pronouns. The district wants courts to view all of this as something other than policy. Just individual decisions. Just coincidence. Nothing to see here.
When Lavigne confronted the school principal and district superintendent about the secrecy, they justified the social worker's actions. That's what makes the "no policy" defense so hollow. When confronted, the institution defended the conduct. That is what ratification looks like.
The legal mechanics here matter beyond this case. The district argues Lavigne can't get into court because she hasn't proven enough facts yet. She can't get the facts because she hasn't gotten into court. That's the trap, and the 1st Circuit locked the door behind her.
The 1st Circuit transformed "plausibility pleading" into a "probability requirement" in violation of SCOTUS precedent Twombly, a recurring problem in lower courts that has produced an "entrenched circuit split," according to the Manhattan Institute's friend-of-the-court brief. This forces plaintiffs across "a wide range of constitutional issues," among them free speech, economic freedom, property rights, and racial discrimination, to "negate lawful explanations" before legal discovery, and "invites courts to weigh competing inferences at the pleading stage."
The court decided who wins before discovery even started, then used the absence of discovery to justify its decision. The Manhattan Institute's brief put it directly: the rule is that courts cannot make plaintiffs "disprove benign explanations that they don't have the information to disprove" because the evidence of intent lies within the "defendant's internal processes."
Lavigne's reply brief argues the district's argument "ignores both Petitioner's theory of the case and the plain facts," and that statements and actions by the board and superintendent show "the logical and certainly plausible explanation" for the girl's secret transitioning is an unwritten policy of "noninvolvement" of parents when their children have gender confusion.
Despite the important underlying questions concerning gender-transitioning and parental rights, this case is about a broader issue: when and how courts can dismiss cases by providing alternate explanations for the facts alleged in a complaint. That question affects every lawsuit.
Nineteen states led by South Carolina, a conservative think tank, and a medical freedom advocacy group are backing Lavigne's petition, which first went before SCOTUS Feb. 20 with no action. The attorneys general backing her were direct about the stakes:
"The question presented is exceptionally important to the States. Persistent avoidance by lower courts leaves States without binding guidance while disputes proliferate."
They want "clarity on this question so that legislatures, state boards of education, and local school districts can conform policies to federal law." That is not a fringe ask. That is nineteen state governments telling the Supreme Court that the current legal landscape is untenable.
Lavigne's timing also benefited from a closely related ruling. The mother noted her good timing in her reply brief, with SCOTUS having reinstated the permanent injunction against California's policies just four days earlier and a week after the district's opposition.
That California case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, is directly relevant. The Supreme Court majority wrote that "the State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy," but that "those policies cut out the primary protectors of children's best interests: their parents." The court ruled 6-3 on ideological lines, allowing a federal judge's ruling in favor of parents who oppose the policy on religious grounds to go into effect.
Great Salt Bay's unwritten practices and California's written ones arrive at the same place: a parent locked out of decisions about her own child. Lavigne's brief notes that the district's practice is little different than California's in writing. The Supreme Court just found California's version unconstitutional. The school board may want SCOTUS to stay away. SCOTUS may have other plans.
America's Frontline Doctors filed a friend-of-the-court brief that the district will not enjoy citing at school board meetings. It called euphemistic language around these interventions "intentional distractions." Such procedures can preemptively sterilize a minor, prevent breastfeeding, and cause "permanent and irreversible damage to facial, body and vocal structures." "The majority of both sexes have lifelong anorgasmia."
The brief's conclusion: "Desistance statistics and the weight of research show that the parental opinions in this case are most likely correct, and the school's approach is medically contraindicated. This is about saving lives."
A school social worker gave a child a chest binder and told her not to tell her mother. The school board defended it. The district court dismissed it. The 1st Circuit agreed. And now the board is asking the Supreme Court to look the other way too.
The Goldwater Institute's petition for a writ of certiorari argues that the school district violated Lavigne's rights under the U.S. Constitution to direct the education and upbringing of her children. That is not a radical position. It is the foundational premise that parents, not school social workers, hold authority over the bodies and identities of their minor children.
Amber Lavigne has been fighting this for over three years. Nineteen states are with her. The Supreme Court just tore down the same wall in California. The board can file all the opposition briefs it wants. The current is moving against it.