Ashley Willey found out her daughter was identifying as a boy by accident at a teacher training event. 

During the 2021-22 school year, Willey, a teacher herself at another school in the same district where her daughter was enrolled, was showing off pictures of her daughter she had in her planner and was surprised to learn that the teachers had never heard of her daughter—at least not by that name. They knew her by a male name and masculine pronouns.

“I went home, I had a discussion with my husband and my daughter. And I immediately emailed all of her teachers and the principal at the school, saying I was very disappointed in their decision to do this and to not let me know, and that it needed to stop; that they didn’t have to agree with me, but that I was her mother and she was a girl, and this was her name, and this is how it would be,” Willey said in an interview with IW Features. 

Black Butte High School’s principal, Bryant Blake, responded by taking the case to human resources instead of simply abiding by the Willeys’ wishes for their child. 

During their meeting with human resources, Willey and her husband were told that school officials would continue to refer to their daughter with whatever pronouns made her feel “comfortable.” 

At yet another meeting with Sweetwater County School District #1’s then-superintendent, Kelly McGovern, the Willeys were assured that they would be kept abreast of any changes in their daughter related to her identity and gender. The Willeys ended the 2021-2022 school year shaken, but assured that this would be the last time the school would try to foster a secret “gender identity” in their daughter.

One can imagine Willey’s shock, then, when in a meeting she attended in her capacity as a teacher in the district during the 2022-2023 school year, she learned of a new policy known as the “Preferred and Chosen Name Procedure.” The policy stipulated that if a child asked to be referred to with a certain name or pronouns, school staff were obligated to honor that. Furthermore, if a child expressed a desire to hide his or her identity from parents, school staff must do so, according to the policy. 

Willey told IW Features she doesn’t believe she would have even known about the policy had she not been employed as a teacher in the district. 

For Willey, the policy was not only a betrayal of parents like herself who just want what’s best for their children, but a violation of her religious beliefs as well. Willey said she believes in the Bible’s Ninth Commandment: thou shalt not lie. Yet she was now being mandated by her employer to lie to parents about their children. 

Willey also realized this new policy meant that her daughter’s school could be hiding information about her daughter’s well-being, despite their earlier assurances not to.

“I went immediately to the principal of that high school … and I said, ‘The new procedure policy that’s come out in the district, I want to make sure that the meeting we had at the end of last year with my husband and the superintendent and yourself, that you are still going to communicate with us,’” she recalled. “‘This doesn’t change that?’ And he looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘No, this changes everything. If she asked me to lie to you, I will.’”

McGovern likewise made it clear the Willeys would receive no help from school officials in fighting the new policy, Willey said. So she decided to pursue legal action. 

“I was sitting in my classroom one day, and I was crying. And a teacher friend came in and had a sticky note with ‘childandparentalrights.org’ on it and a phone number. She said, ‘A mutual friend of ours found this and said you should give them a call.’ And so I did, and I have no doubt in my mind that that was a blessing and meant to happen because it put us in touch with Ernie and the great people who have been helping us from that point,” Willey said.

Ernie Trakas, a lawyer with Child and Parental Rights, a law firm that specializes in parental rights cases, said in an interview with IW Features that his group filed a lawsuit on the Willeys’ behalf in April 2023. The lawsuit alleged that the Willeys’ constitutional right as parents to make determinations about their own child’s physical and mental well-being were violated by the district. 

The lawsuit also took aim at the district for violating the First Amendment’s free exercise clause both by requiring Willey as a teacher to lie to parents about their children’s “gender identity,” and by interfering with the Willeys’ right to raise their child according to their own religious beliefs. 

The lawsuit listed the school district, Superintendent Kelly McGovern, Assistant Superintendent Nicole Bolton, Director of Student Services Casey Arnoldi, and Black Butte High School Principal Bryant Blake as defendants. 

Unfortunately, U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled in April 2025 that there was not enough proof the district violated the Willeys’ parental and religious rights, tossing the lawsuit. According to Trakas, Skavdahl claimed that because Willey “never inquired as to whether or not the district was transitioning her daughter, then she had no reason to be concerned about her free exercise right, or her free speech right, or her right as a parent.”

“He took the position that somehow, Ashley, and by extension, every other parent in that school district, if they want to make determinations regarding the health and well-being of their child, in addition to their First Amendment free exercise rights, somehow that has to be expressed by a parent,” Trakas explained.

Trakas told IW Features they have appealed the judge’s ruling and have good reason to believe it will fare better this time around, following a pivotal Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor this year, which ruled in favor of a preliminary injunction against a Maryland school district that wouldn’t allow parents to opt their children out of reading “LGBT-friendly” books.

“I say not lightly, but also not without confidence, that the recent decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in a Mahmoud v. Taylor with respect to Montgomery County Public Schools, clearly and in my opinion, unequivocally holds that parents do, in fact, have an absolute right to make decisions concerning their child’s upbringing, particularly with respect to religious beliefs,” Trakas said. “And so while the Mahmoud decision came out after the court in this case granted the motion for summary judgment, we are supremely confident that, based on that, we will prevail on appeal in this case.”