Case: Amber Lavigne v. Great Salt Bay Community School Board, No. 25-759
Lower Court: First Circuit
Docketed: 2025-12-29
Status: Denied
Question Presented: In December 2022, Petitioner discovered a chest binder in her 13-year-old child's room. After speaking with her child, she learned that a social worker at her child's public school had given her child the binder and that others had "socially transitioned" the child by using a different name and pronouns. No one from the school informed Petitioner of these decisions, and despite a written policy requiring parental involvement in such decisions, school officials have repeatedly said that school st...
On March 30, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Lavigne v. Great Salt Bay Community School Board, declining to take up the case after two conferences and three amicus briefs urging review. The denial leaves standing the First Circuit’s dismissal of Amber Lavigne’s constitutional claims against her child’s school. The full docket is available here.
Lavigne alleged that school staff gave her 13-year-old child a chest binder and socially transitioned the child using a different name and pronouns, all without notifying her. Despite a written school policy requiring parental involvement, officials maintained no policy had been violated. Lavigne sued, arguing the school operated under an unwritten policy of parental exclusion, in violation of her fundamental right to direct her child’s upbringing. The First Circuit dismissed the complaint at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage, reasoning that a more probable alternative explanation existed for the school’s conduct.
The petition raised two questions. The first concerned a genuine circuit split: five circuits permit dismissal when a court finds a more probable alternative explanation for the alleged conduct, while three circuits hold that dismissal is proper only when the plaintiff’s own explanation is itself implausible. The second asked whether parental rights include a constitutional entitlement to notification when schools take steps affecting a child’s gender identity. Amicus briefs from South Carolina and eighteen other states, the Manhattan Institute, and America’s Frontline Doctors pressed the Court to grant review on both questions. More information on the case can be found via SCOTUSBlog.
The denial resolves nothing on the merits. The Twombly/Iqbal circuit split over alternative explanations persists, and the constitutional scope of parental notification rights remains unsettled. Courts and litigants in the First Circuit will continue operating under a pleading standard more favorable to defendants than that applied in several other circuits. A future case presenting a cleaner record or a more developed lower court conflict may eventually draw the Court’s attention to these questions.