Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS) on behalf of parents who withdrew their daughter from school after district policies normalized sexual misconduct from a gender-confused male student. When parents met with school officials about the boy’s history of publicly exposing and touching his genitals and the emotional distress it caused their daughter, SFPS dismissed their concerns and labeled the boy’s behavior “normal.” 

Under SFPS’s policies, teachers must keep secrets from parents about gender confusion. However, students are required to uphold another child’s perceived gender identity, share restrooms and locker rooms with gender-confused students, and must tolerate inappropriate sexual behavior—a clear violation of parental rights and Title IX anti-discrimination law.

Liberty Counsel requests SFPS protect all students by disciplining students engaging in sexual misconduct, eliminating its policies that encourage gender “transitions” and secrecy, and reinstating sex-based privacy restrictions for restrooms and locker rooms. Liberty Counsel sent the letter January 9, 2026, requesting a response by January 30, 2026.

In November 2025, the parents withdrew their daughter due to the district’s policies creating conditions for escalating harassment and inappropriate behavior resulting in an unproductive and unsafe learning environment for their child. The letter states that the school district’s counselor, “neither a doctor nor a psychologist,” claimed the boy’s sexual behavior was “normal” for his age and dismissed any psychological, mental, and emotional distress of others over the “hyper-sexualized conduct.” The counselor even claimed to the parents that their daughter—not her classmate—needed counseling to be more accepting of gender-confused behavior. 

“The District’s LGBT and restroom policies force [this child] to live in a manner contrary to the ‘moral standards’ and ‘religious beliefs’ that her parents hope to ‘inculcate,’” reads the letter. “When the District exposed children to hyper-sexual and inappropriate information and behaviors, it ‘overstep[ped] the boundaries of school authority and impermissibly usurp[ed] the fundamental rights of parents to bring up their children.’” 

Under Title IX, students are protected from sexual harassment by school leadership or harassment of a student by another student, even when there is deliberate indifference. In January 2025, the White House issued an executive order for all educational programs receiving federal funding to recognize that an individual is “either male or female” and to require sex-specific designated spaces. 

SFPS has been “unquestionably put on notice” that it could face liability for implementing gender-neutral restroom policies and for enabling inappropriate sexual conduct by male students against female students, concluded Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel specifically requests that the SFPS:  

1. Protect gender-confused children from psychological (leading to physical) harm by eliminating policies and practices that encourage them to reject their biological sex.

2. Protect gender-confused children and respect the rights of their parents to direct their upbringing and education by eliminating the secrecy-from-parents requirements relating to disclosure/confidentiality of a child’s gender confusion. 

3. Protect female students by reinstating sex-based privacy protections, requiring gender-confused students to use the restroom consistent with their biological sex, or the single-user gender neutral restroom.  

4. Protect students from inappropriate sexual conduct and behavior by, at a minimum, disciplining the child engaged in inappropriate conduct such as fondling or exposing his male genitals; eliminating dual-sex restrooms and lockers; and eliminating dual-sex rooms on overnight trips without affirmative consent by other students and their parents. 

5. Respect the moral, religious and scientific beliefs of students, parents and staff by rescinding any policy or curriculums requiring students and staff affirm another person’s perceived or claimed gender identity by the use of false names and pronouns.  

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The deliberate indifference by Santa Fe Public Schools toward sexual misconduct and the safety and wellbeing of female students violates Title IX and ignores morality and biological reality. Requiring a female student to be exposed to the genitals of the opposite sex in class and other intimate settings such as a locker room is morally reprehensible. Gender policies that ratify sexual harassment and force parents to withdraw their children from school over debilitating psychological, mental, and emotional distress is a clear violation of parental rights. SFPS should eliminate these policies immediately to protect children.”