Yet another dishonest court refuses to follow the law and assume facts in plaintiff's favor
(Ver. 2 - Updated 3-16-2025)
On March 12, 2025, parental rights activist January Littlejohn and her husband Jeffrey had their federal case dismissed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal. The issue was whether school officials violated parental rights by socially "transitioning" the Littlejohns' thirteen-year-old daughter without notifying them. The ruling states that the correct legal standard is whether the official conduct "shocks the conscience," and ruled that no, it does not.
In 2021, the Littlejohns sued the Leon County, Florida School District because they secretly started to "transition" their daughter. As the case moved forward, January has gained notoriety as a parental rights activist. She has told her story on social media, and at a number of public events. Recently, January was invited to sit with first lady Melania Trump at president Trump's speech to Congress.
The "Guide"
Like most schools across the U.S. nowadays, Leon County maintains a "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide," which instructs school officials to "affirm" gender-confused children, and to do so without notifying parents.
Quoted from the "Support Guide":
Outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the student[’]s health and well-being. Some students are not able to be out at home because their parents are unaccepting of LGBTQ+ people out. As many as 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+, many of whom have been rejected by their families for being LGBTQ+. Outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless.
Improper Fact-Finding
The Trial Court dismissed the Littlejohn case. Supported by a plethora of major NGOs (including ADF) submitting amicus briefs, the Littlejohns appealed the dismissal to the 11th Circuit, where they encountered judges Kevin C. Newsom, Robin S. Rosenbaum, and Gerald B. Tjoflat.
Upholding the decision of the lower court, the appeal court ruled that:
And perhaps most importantly, Defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child. Under these circumstances, even if the Littlejohns felt that Defendants’ efforts to help their child were misguided or wrong, the mere fact that the school officials acted contrary to the Littlejohns’ wishes does not mean that their conduct “shocks the conscience” in a constitutional sense.
The above paragraph is conclusive evidence that the Eleventh Circuit is corrupt. People should be up in arms. To understand why, you must first learn a couple points of civil procedure. First, in any kind of civil case there are the facts and there is the law. Plaintiff files a Complaint, alleging a series of facts and contending that, if proven at trial, these facts add up to the Defendant having violated some law. The Defendant can deny the factual allegations of course, but that doesn't happen unless until the Defendant is made to file an Answer to the Complaint.
At the pre-Answer stage, the Defendant can dispute the law with a procedure called a Motion to Dismiss, which is what happened in Littlejohn. In a Motion to Dismiss, the Judge is required to assume as true all of the facts alleged by the Plaintiff, and evaluate the claim as a pure matter of law. In a Motion to Dismiss the Defendant essentially says, "So what? Even assuming we did all the bad things alleged in this complaint, it still does not constitute a violation of any known law."
What happened in Littlejohn (and many other cases I know about) is that the Court made factual findings, and then used those findings against the Plaintiffs as an excuse to dismiss the case. This is an egregious perversion of the law, and a gross violation of the Littlejohns' right to petition, and their right to a jury trial.
Just what factual finding did the Littlejohn Court make that was used against them? It's right here:
Defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child.
Disputes about intent, belief, and motivation are factual disputes, not legal disputes. Did you catch that? What the Defendants knew, when they knew it, what they believed, and what motivated them at the time of the wrongdoing are factual disputes to be decided by the jury, and only by the jury.
"Intent" can be found if Defendants actually intended harm, or acted with a "reckless disregard" for whether harm would occur. At this stage of the proceeding, neither the Trial Court nor the Appeal Court had any business deciding that the School Officials "did not act with intent to injure" or that they "sought to help the child." The Court was required to assume all facts in the light most favorable to January Littlejohn and her husband. Clearly they did not do that.
What could and should have been argued is that the School Officials knew (or reasonably should have known) that social transitioning very often leads to medical transition, including puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones. Further, School Officials knew (or reasonably should have known) that such "gender affirming care" is harmful and disabling.
Adolescents Cannot Consent
Here's another quote from the Opinion that should raise eyebrows:
Defendants [School District Officials] did not force the child to attend a Student Support Plan meeting [to discuss gender accommodations], to not invite the Littlejohns to that meeting, or to socially transition at school,” the opinion said. “In fact, Defendants did not force the Littlejohns’ child to do anything at all.
For crying out loud, January Littlejohn's daughter was 13 years old at the time. Of course the school officials didn't "force" her to the gender meeting. That's not the question. The question is whether the Defendants obtained informed consent to a potentially life-altering process. Newsflash: 13-year-old girls cannot consent. To anything. Until yesterday, we all understood that this is what parents are for. Well, not anymore, says the 11th Circuit. The State owns your children. We'll decide whether to transgender them. You parents need to sit down and shut up.
There have been a number of cases recently involving school officials having sex –consensual sex – with students, for example Jacqueline Ma. Following the "reasoning" of the 11th Circuit, we should ask whether the former teacher-of-the-year "forced" her victims (11 and 12 year old boys) to look at the nude photos she texted, or "forced" one of them to attend an after-school meeting where she took her shirt off, or "forced" them to accept oral and vaginal sex later.
As long as teacher-of-the-year Jacqueline Ma didn't "force" those adolescent boys to have sex with her, the 11th Circuit would reason, the child should have the right to do what he wants. Right? There are a currently a dearth of cases directly confronting school "gender affirmation" policies. But since the underlying issue is informed consent to adult behavior, wouldn't an analogy to statutory rape be much more apt?
If adolescents lack the maturity to consent to sex with adults, surely they lack the maturity to consent to medical procedures that will sterilize them. While Littlejohn "only" involved "social transitioning," make no mistake: So-called "social transition" is the first step in what very often leads to the use of puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones.
In my estimation, comparing Littlejohn to statutory rape in not only correct, it understates the problem. Suppose teachers were not only having sex with kids, but that the school district had adopted an official policy stating that teachers were allowed to have "consensual" sex with the students, and required that they conceal the whole thing from parents, so as to not violate the "constitutional rights" of the students. What then?
In the 11th Circuit's mind, if the sex was not "forced" on the children, then it should be OK, right? And we certainly must not "out" the students to their parents, because many parents simply don't understand the sexual needs and desires of their children. Children need protection from their old-fashioned (read: neanderthal) parents. Get it?
Just what does the 11th Circuit's Opinion have to say about the issue of informed consent? Basically nothing. The word "consent" appears a total of 5 times in the Opinion, first when the 11th Circuit explains that the Littlejohns brought the case because:
They sought a “declaration that Defendants violated [their] fundamental rights” by (1) permitting their child to “select[] a new ‘affirmed name and pronouns,’ without parental notification and consent”; (2) prohibiting school staff from communicating with them about their child’s “discordant gender identity”; and (3) instructing school staff to “deceive” them by “using different names and pronouns around parents than are used in school.” They also sought nominal and compensatory damages against the Board and against the individual Defendants in their individual capacities.
Notice the sneer quotes around "deceive," as if a policy explicitly concealing social transition was anything besides deceptive. The next mention of "consent" occurs as the Court cites Wilkinson v. Leland for the reassuring proposition that:
No legislative act could transfer the property of A to B without his consent.
Consent was apparently not necessary here, because the Court had already decided that a school policy which was "executive" in nature (as opposed to"legislative") means, in the 11th Circuit's mind, that parental rights are not fundamental rights (despite the Supreme Court ruling countless times that it is).
The next mention of "consent" refers, not to parental consent, but to the purported "consent" of the governed. Clearly suggesting that public school policy to secretly transgender kids has been going on for the whole history of this nation, judge Rosenbaum quotes Jackman v. Rosenbaum (presumably no relation) for the notion that:
If a thing has been practiced for two hundred years by common consent, it will need a strong case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it.
Rosenbaum (the 11th circuit Judge) ignores the inherent contradiction present with any "consenting child." In finding that children have privacy rights to be upheld against their own parents, this woke judge goes so far as to remind us that:
... sodomy laws were rarely “enforced against consenting adults acting in private”.
If sodomy laws were "rarely" enforced, that means they were sometimes enforced, and enforced arbitraily. But never mind that. The elephant in the room is that Rosenbaum's argument refers to consenting adults, not 13-year-old children. If a 13-year-old girl can "consent" to a new gender identity behind her parents' backs, it follows that she should also be able to consent to getting drunk and having sex. Both situations ask whether an adolescent has the maturity to make potentially life-altering decisions. If you disagree, dear reader, please explain the conceptual difference. My email is below.
Judge Tjoflat's Dissent
The final example of the word "consent" occurs in Judge Tjoflat's dissent, at the end of this 2-1 split decision. The 95-year-old asks:
Does the Constitution still protect parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children when government actors intrude without their knowledge or consent?
The Majority says it does not. It reaches this conclusion by applying an illogical, unauthorized, and atextual “shocks-the-conscience” standard that denies the Littlejohns the ability to vindicate their fundamental right to raise their child. The question is whether th Littlejohns alleged a violation of a fundamental right, not whether the conduct also “shocked the conscience."
Of course Judge Tjoflat is correct in maintaining the long-standing rule of law that parents have a constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children, and that such constitutional right is fundamental. Distinguishing "fundamental" from regular, garden-variety constitutional rights matters (according to precedent) because it affects the level of "scrutiny" that the Court is required to apply. Since the majority found this not to be a matter requiring "strict scrutiny," the Court must only ask whether the secret social transition policty "shocks the conscience."
While Judge Tjoflat gets 2 1/2 stars out of 5, he still misses the point: A school policy transitioning children, concealing it from parents, and finding that adolescents can consent to potetially life-altering decisions abosulely does SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE. Don't you agree? If not, please go back to my hypothetical example of a policy allowing children to "consent" to sex with teachers. Would that not shock your conscience? And if that is not a valid comparison, pretty please with sugar on top, explain the difference to me.
And, Tjoflat did not mention the improper factual finding. All he did was dispute whether "shocks the conscience" was the correct legal standard. In short, the Littlejohn Court took the issue of informed consent and swept it under the rug. There is not one word about the risk of sterilization or any of the other potential harms associated with "gender affirming care." Furthermore, there is not one word, by any of the judges or lawyers involved about the factual findings that the Court improperly made. If the school officials intended harm to children, wouldn't that "shock the conscience"? And wouldn't you want to argue that if you were on the side of January Littljohn?
Conclusion: Alex Baker is the Most Brilliant Legal Mind? Or?
The 50-page 11th Circuit decision is published, meaning it can be cited as "the law" in future cases. As it turns out, the improper fact-finding just blew right by all these legal eagles on all sides of this case.
Am I the only legal expert in all of the U.S. who understands that issues of knowledge, intent and motivation are factual disputes, and must not be decided by judges? Or is there a different explanation for why nobody raised the issue of improper fact-finding?
To me, it seems there are only two possibilities - either (a) I am smarter and more experienced than all of the attorneys involved, or (b) the fix is in. If there is a third possibility I'm missing, please feel free to educate me.
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