PHOENIX — A Mesa Public Schools board member, backed by a right-wing legal group founded by Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, is suing her school district over policies that support transgender students.
The 21-page lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, claims the district's transgender guidelines were never legally adopted by the school board and violate the U.S. Constitution, as well as state law on parents' rights.
The suit asks the court to throw out the guidelines.
The school district and Superintendent Andi Fourlis are named as defendants.
District representatives could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
A legal opinion from the school board's attorneys in May found no legal issues with the transgender guidelines:
"The current version of the MPS Guidelines do not violate state or federal laws and follows MPS policy. Additionally, we see no contradiction between what the law requires under the Arizona parents' bill of rights (A.R.S. 1-602) and what the Guidelines recommend to staff as a tool to assist in addressing the students' needs."
The legal opinion, from the firm Udall Shumway, did acknowledge that "issues regarding students' use of restrooms and locker rooms, and use of students' preferred names and pronouns, are not uniformly settled among the courts across the nation."
Mesa Unified, with 55,000 students, is the largest school district in the state.
Rachel Walden, a member of the nonpartisan Mesa Unified Governing Board since January, filed the suit. She has been a critic of the district's guidelines for transgender students.
When reached by telephone Wednesday, Walden declined to comment.
"I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to say anything that's going to cause repercussions down the road," she said.
She wouldn't say how she was connected with a lawyer from Miller's organization.
Walden has filed to run for election statewide in 2024, as a Republican candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission.
The five-member commission regulates the state's electric, water and natural gas utilities, and the securities industry.
Walden's campaign biography says she worked in the financial services industry.
Walden's lawyer is affiliated with the Washington, D.C-based America First Legal Foundation, created by Miller "to oppose the radical left's anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade," according to the foundation website.
The group's focus has been on culture war issues.
Miller was the architect of Trump's child-separation policy at the Southwest border.
Blake Masters, a former U.S. Senate candidate who is now running for a congressional seat in Arizona, is listed on America First Legal's Board of Directors, according to the organization's most recent tax filings.
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