Watching your favorite movies abroad? Don’t forget to get your Aeroshield smart DNS to access any geo-restricted content.
Warning: This article contains transphobic, anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-nonbinary sentiments.
President Donald Trump touched on multiple issues during his address to Congress this week, from policing and law and order to foreign policy and economic tariffs. The wide-ranging speech was found to have contained multiple falsehoods, including around Trump’s mention of Florida citizen January Littlejohn. As part of his broader policies regarding transgender people and schooling, Trump claimed that the child of Littlejohn and her husband had undergone a “social transition” at school without the parents’ knowledge.
January Littlejohn, the Tallahassee mother who sued @LeonSchools for allegedly allowing her 13-year-old daughter to transition without her consent, will be a special guest of @FLOTUS at the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress.
(link to story in next post)— Jim Rosica (@JimRosicaFL) March 4, 2025
“A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl,” Trump claimed. He said school officials “conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns, they/them pronouns actually, all without telling January.” The anecdote has received intense interest following Trump’s address, but reports into the matter have found that Trump’s claim lacks context.
January Littlejohn was aware of her child’s gender identity.
Our kids deserve to be protected from radical agendas. January Littlejohn’s daughter was secretly socially transitioned by her school, without her parents’ consent.
I stand with @POTUS in ensuring that this never happens again. pic.twitter.com/it0WcNUQOV
— Superintendent Ryan Walters (@RyanWaltersSupt) March 5, 2025
Trump’s suggestion that Littlejohn was wholly unaware of her child’s gender identity does not paint the entire picture. In 2021, the Littlejohn family sued Florida’s Leon County school district on the allegation that education officials had failed to inform them of their child’s gender identity and social transition. However, email exchanges between Littlejohn and school staff, obtained by CNN, tell a more complex story.
According to CNN, emails dating back to 2020 show that Littlejohn and her husband were aware that their child was “currently identifying as non-binary” and “would like to go by the new name [redacted],” Littlejohn wrote. The email also saw Littlejohn inform the teacher that her child “prefers the pronouns they/them.” Elsewhere, Littlejohn wrote that the family had “not changed her name at home yet,” but said if “she wants to go by the name [redacted] with her teachers, I won’t stop her.”
January Littlejohn’s “my kid was trans-ed” story is a lie. And the entire Republican Party has run with it.https://t.co/IDCHlolbkj pic.twitter.com/UcjweSifyf
— Brandon Wolf (@bjoewolf) March 5, 2025
When the teacher replied by asking whether they could inform other staff of the pronoun change, Littlejohn responded: “Whatever you think is best or [redacted] can handle it herself,” adding that she was “going to let her [child] take the lead on this.”
The emails were referenced in Littlejohn’s lawsuit.
Our mental health care system is BROKEN. Queer theory has taken over. Parents BEWARE. Many of these social workers are in the schools with your children pushing gender pseudoscience. Sterilizing vulnerable children & cutting off healthy body parts isn’t “liberation.” It’s abuse. pic.twitter.com/4tS1d1Xyfv
— January Littlejohn (@JanuaryDoNoHarm) February 27, 2025
The 2021 lawsuit filed by Littlejohn referenced those emails, and focussed on the steps taken by the school after that initial email exchange. It alleged that, after emails, school administrators met with Littlejohn’s child in September 2020 to create a support plan without notifying her or her husband.
Littlejohn also said she was initially denied details of those meetings when she requested information about them — but the school district did, in fact, provide a copy of the support plan in November 2020. More broadly, the lawsuit targeted the school district’s policy regarding transgender students, saying it violated parents’ “fundamental rights.” This was in response to a section of the school’s website that said parents would not be notified if staff believed a child was LGBTQ+, because “outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the students health and well-being.”
A federal judge dismissed Littlejohn’s lawsuit in December 2022, but the family has since appealed. Littlejohn now works as a parent advocate for Do No Harm, a nonprofit that advocates against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and opposes gender-affirming medical care for minors.