A School’s Secret Intervention and a Mother’s Legal Reckoning

Summary

Morning Wire: "A School’s Secret Intervention and a Mother’s Legal Reckoning"

Date: January 18, 2026
Host: John Bickley (Daily Wire Executive Editor) with Georgia Howe
Guests: Amber Levine (mother at the center of a legal case) and Adam Shelton (attorney, Shelton Goldwater Institute)

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Episode Overview

This episode covers the controversy and legal battle initiated by Amber Levine, a mother from Maine, after discovering that her 13-year-old daughter received chest binders from a school social worker without parental knowledge or consent. The episode delves into the legal, ethical, and parental rights issues at the heart of the case, featuring Levine’s personal account and her attorney's legal analysis. The conversation also explores broader questions about parental awareness, public school policy, and resources for families facing similar challenges.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Discovery and Parental Concerns

• Amber Levine's Experience

  • Amber recounts discovering chest binders in her 13-year-old daughter’s room, which immediately raised questions and concerns ([02:17–03:54]):

    "She was 13 at the time. I didn't know much about breast binding at the time, but I knew it wasn't like a typical sports bra. I knew that it wasn't something I had purchased for my daughter." – Amber Levine (02:30)

  • After questioning her daughter, Amber learned the binders were provided by a school social worker, prompting shock and a sense of betrayal, especially as she was unaware her daughter was seeing this social worker ([03:54]).
  • Amber had previously connected her daughter with an external therapist for anxiety and depression, but the school's intervention came as a surprise ([03:58–04:34]).

• Immediate Response to the School

  • Amber reached out to the school administration for answers, and while initially receiving concern, the school quickly defended the social worker’s actions ([05:08–06:14]).

    “By Wednesday, they were telling me that the social worker didn't do anything wrong. And at that point I had pulled my daughter from school, and now here we are.” – Amber Levine (06:06)

2. Legal Challenge and Arguments

• Path to Litigation

  • Adam Shelton explains the legal strategy, starting with a letter to the school requesting policy change, followed by a lawsuit after the school refused ([06:28–06:55]).
  • Both the Federal District Court of Maine and the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Amber's claims, citing state law allowing confidential relationships between students and school counselors ([07:02]).

    "The court of appeals determined that there was a... main law that allows a school counselor to establish a confidential relationship with the child. So they said that the First Circuit believed that that law protected this sort of conduct..." – Adam Shelton (07:02)

• Constitutional Argument

  • Shelton details the federal constitutional claim: that parental rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children are undermined if schools withhold significant information ([07:39–08:20]).

    "Parents have a fundamental right to control and direct the education and upbringing of their children. But a parent can't meaningfully do that... if school officials are withholding information from parents, especially information that directly affects the mental health or physical well being of a child." – Adam Shelton (07:39)

• Supreme Court Prospects

  • Shelton believes recent Supreme Court jurisprudence on parental rights might be favorable ([08:20–08:29]).
  • Mentions possible consolidation with other similar appeals, noting the national stakes ([09:51–10:38]).

3. Personal Impact and Parental Advice

• Relationship with Daughter

  • Amber discusses how the incident temporarily strained her relationship with her daughter but shares that their bond has since strengthened ([10:47–11:37]).

    “Our relationship for a brief moment in time was definitely strained because of adults that I trusted, which is tough to swallow, I think, for both of us... Our relationship is great.” – Amber Levine (10:47)

• Advice for Other Parents

  • Amber shares advice for parents navigating similar situations, emphasizing:
    • Withdrawing children from public school if possible
    • Monitoring children’s online activities, which she believes pose greater risks than in-person unsupervised time ([12:08–14:31]):

      “Let your kids go explore the outdoor world and have them put the technology away. There’s a lot of nefarious stuff going on online. And I mean, we've all fallen down rabbit holes on the Internet, so our kids are no different.”

    • Building deeper, intentional family connections (“Sit down and have dinner with your kids every night and ask them what their favorite part of the day was.”)
  • Notes that both teachers and parents can feel unsupported or conflicted by current school policies and administrative pressures ([12:08–14:31]).

4. Resources and Support Groups

• Amber recommends the podcast Gender: A Wider Lens, hosted by Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad, as a valuable informational and support resource, along with parent support groups connected to the show ([14:49–16:11]):

  “They have a great library of resources. They've interviewed everybody in the gender world at this point. Their names are Stella o' Malley and Sasha Ayyad.” – Amber Levine (15:00)

5. Conclusion and Legal Next Steps

• Final legal update: The Supreme Court will consider the petition after the school board’s reply deadline (January 28, 2026). The case represents a question with national parental rights implications ([16:11–16:36]):

  “We're very hopeful that the Supreme Court's gonna take a serious look at this, at this case. Cause it does present an issue of national importance.” – Adam Shelton (16:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Amber, on school’s handling:

  "I think she knew what I was talking about immediately. They met with me on Monday, expressed great concern, met with the social worker on Tuesday. By Wednesday, they were telling me that the social worker didn't do anything wrong." (05:54)

• Shelton, on constitutional claim:

  "The US Constitution trumps any state law." (07:18)

• Amber, on advice to parents:

  "There are a few things that parents can do... First of all, if you can, pull your kids out of public school... Secondly, we need to pay more attention to what our kids are doing online." (12:16)

• Amber, on parental connection:

  "Sit down and have dinner with your kids every night and ask them what their favorite part of the day was." (14:21)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:17] – Amber’s discovery of the chest binder
• [03:54] – How Amber’s daughter responded and initial confusion
• [05:08] – Contact and response from the Maine school
• [06:28] – Legal strategy explained by Adam Shelton
• [07:39] – Constitutional principles of parental rights
• [10:47] – Amber on the mother-daughter relationship after the discovery
• [12:08] – Parental advice: school options, online risks, family connection
• [14:49] – Practical resources and support groups for parents
• [16:11] – Next steps in the Supreme Court appeal

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Resources Mentioned

• Gender: A Wider Lens podcast (hosts Stella O’Malley & Sasha Ayad): educational resource and source of support groups ([15:00])
• Parent summits and online support groups facilitated by psychotherapists

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a first-hand perspective on the intensifying legal and cultural battle over parental rights in school settings, focusing on cases involving gender identity and school confidentiality. It outlines the personal toll such conflicts take on families and provides concrete advice and resources for parents. With the case now before the Supreme Court, the outcome could set a major precedent affecting public school policies nationwide.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Host]

In December of 2022, Amber Levine got a huge surprise. While cleaning her young daughter's bedroom, she discovered clothing used to flatten breasts. She was even more surprised to hear her daughter had gotten it from her school social worker. Now Amber is asking the Supreme Court to make sure this doesn't happen to another parent.

[John Bickley]

In this episode, we sit down with Amber and the attorney representing her in front of the high court. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a week edition of money wire.

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[John Bickley]

Joining us now is Amber Levine and her attorney, Adam Shelton from the Shelton Goldwater Institute. Welcome to the show.

[Amber Levine]

Thanks for having us.

[Adam Shelton]

Yes, thank you for having us.

[John Bickley]

So, Amber, I wanted to Start with, well, the beginning of all this. First, what did you think when you found that chest binder in your daughter's room? How old was she? How surprised were you? What was that like in that first discovery?

[Amber Levine]

So she was 13 at the time. I didn't know much about breast binding at the time, but I knew it wasn't like a typical sports bra. I knew that it wasn't something I had purchased for my daughter. So I was very curious where it came from, and I knew it was going to take a conversation or two to kind of parcel out with my daughter where it came from. But I was confused and concerned for sure.

[John Bickley]

And what did you learn when you asked her about it?

[Amber Levine]

I learned that she received this binder from. From a social worker at her school. Not only did she receive the one, but she received a second as well, which raised great concern and lots of questions because I didn't even know she was meeting with this specific social worker at the time. So I immediately reached out to the school for answers.

[John Bickley]

Did she say she was in the process of socially transitioning?

[Amber Levine]

She didn't say that. She didn't say much, to be honest with you. She was a little embarrassed, a little, a little taken aback that I had found this binder and she was keeping it from me. And like any 13 year old when they're caught in a lie with their parents, she, she. She didn't have much to say at first, but she did know that I was pursuing conversations with the school at the time about it. But no, she wasn't necessarily saying that at the time she was socially transitioning. She was just kind of trying to cover her tracks in the moment.

[John Bickley]

So did you have any prior warnings at all that something was going on?

[Amber Levine]

I knew that she was feeling some anxiety, not necessarily surrounding gender, but I had connected her with a therapist, a community therapist, the spring prior to finding these binders in December of 2022. So the spring of 2021, she began seeing a community therapist that she and I found for her, mostly for some anxiety and depression she was experiencing.

[John Bickley]

Now, we've seen a pattern of a lot of these therapists pushing kids in this direction. Did that therapist seem to encourage this or was this more the school and the social worker?

[Amber Levine]

It was more the school. The. The community therapist that I was working with was working very closely with me, was being very honest and open with what was going on with my daughter, you know, but this is a therapist that I sought out within the community, which I tell parents all the time, if you're if your student or your child needs help and they are in a public school setting, please go find a community therapist. Don't, don't enlist the school social workers to help with this stuff because a lot of them are very young and not as well trained as a lot of the community therapists. And you just have more options.

[John Bickley]

Now the school is a public school in Maine, the Great Salt Bay Community School. What did school officials say when you did reach out to them?

[Amber Levine]

At first they expressed some concern and it was a Friday evening when I sent the initial email, so they met with me on Monday. And so pretty quickly they reacted. In hindsight, I do. I like. In the email I mentioned a binder and the principal called me on Saturday and she expressed concern with what the binder contained, as if it was a three ring binder like you would find in a school setting. In hindsight, I think that was her trying to buy some time to try and rally, rally her people to figure out how to cover their tracks. But in the moment, I thought it was a genuine, like, what was in this binder. I think she knew what I was talking about immediately. They met with me on Monday, expressed great concern, met with the social worker on Tuesday. By Wednesday, they were telling me that the social worker didn't do anything wrong. And at that point I had pulled my daughter from school, and now here we are.

[Georgia Howe]

So they quickly defended the social worker.

[John Bickley]

You pulled your daughter out of the.

[Georgia Howe]

School and now you're taking legal action. Which brings us to you, Adam. What were the legal steps? How did we get to this point where the case may be taken up.

[Adam Shelton]

By the Supreme Court from a legal point of view? We sent a letter to the school kind of explaining our view of the law and the situation and asking them to change their policy and to make it explicit that these types of steps could not be taken without at the very least, parental notice and notifying parents that this was happening. The school refused to change their policy. So we on Passive Amber filed the lawsuit in the Federal District Court for Maine. Unfortunately, both the district court in Maine and then the First Court of Appeals in Boston ruled against the claims.

[Georgia Howe]

And what were the arguments from those courts, the district and appeals courts? Why did they rule against you? What was their claims?

[Adam Shelton]

So the Court of Appeals determined that there was a obvious alternative explanation for the school's conduct, and that was that there is a main law that allows a school counselor to establish a confidential relationship with the child. So they said that the First Circuit believed that that law protected this sort of conduct or protected the policy here, which is entirely besides the point, because as we all know, the US Constitution trumps any state law.

[Amber Levine]

Right?

[Georgia Howe]

And on that point, you maintain that Amber's constitutional rights have been violated. Can you unpack that legal argument for us?

[Adam Shelton]

Absolutely. So the Supreme Court has held for over a century now that parents have a fundamental right to control and direct the education and upbringing of their children. But a parent can't meaningfully do that, can't meaningfully decide whether or not a specific school remains the best educational environment for their child. If school officials are withholding information from parents, especially information that directly affects the mental health or physical well being of a child, that's exactly what happened here. Important information was withheld from Amber and it prevented her for a certain amount of time from making the determination of whether or not the Great Salt Bay Community School remained the best educational environment for a child. When she found out about the information, she determined that it wasn't the best educational environment for her child going forward.

[John Bickley]

This is a pretty conservative Supreme Court overall. Do you anticipate that any precedent that they've set in their rulings will eventually work to your favor?

[Adam Shelton]

I think so. Just a year and a half, two years ago, the Supreme Court held in a religious freedom claim that parents had the right to opt out their children from certain lessons. Now we're bringing a strictly parental rights claim. But the logic of that claim applies directly to this claim as well. And I think it's important to note that some of the justices on the court, especially Justice Alito, have taken issue with some of these procedural steps that lower courts have taken to evade answering these important parental rights questions.

[John Bickley]

And what about active cases? Are there other similar cases right now that relate to this in some way?

[Adam Shelton]

There are two other cases that are currently being petitioned to the US Supreme Court right now. All these cases are at the very early stages from a litigation point of view. Basically, in every one of these cases, the government or the school has filed what's known as a motion to dismiss. So it prevents discovery from happening. It prevents any sort of fact finding from happening. Right now there are two other cases besides Amber's case that are on appeal to this U.S. supreme Court. And there have been others in recent years where again, Justice Alito has noted that lower courts have been using kind of fancy procedural mechanisms to evade answering these questions. And this case prevents another one of those situations. So we're hopeful that the Supreme Court will take up this case, one of these other cases, soon and really answer an important national question about what Parental rights mean, especially in a public school setting.

[John Bickley]

One more legal question. Is there an opportunity for your case to maybe be combined with other cases? As we've seen with the transgender sports cases from Idaho and West Virginia, that's.

[Adam Shelton]

Something the court chooses to do. And I would say that those other two cases aren't really relevant to this particular case, which really just involves parental rights. Parental notice that there are other parental rights claims that are currently pending, and this case could potentially be combined with one of those. Or the Supreme Court may do something known as essentially pausing this case if they take up one of those other cases while they decide one of those other cases. But that's all largely up to the Supreme Court and not really kind of one of our choices that we have. All we can do is petition the court to take up the case and say this is a really pressing national issue that needs their intervention.

[John Bickley]

So, Amber, a couple of final questions for you. First of all, how is your relationship with your daughter doing today? If you feel comfortable talking about that, I'd love to hear about it.

[Amber Levine]

Sure. I feel very strongly that I need to protect her privacy, but I can speak to our relationship. And our relationship for a brief moment in time was definitely strained because of adults that I trusted, which is tough to swallow, I think, for both of us as she's inched into her 16th year, which is crazy that she's 16, but our relationship is great. We attend a lot of wonderful, you know, performances together and things like that. We spend a lot of time just trying to connect, just she and I. I have two younger children. Her brothers are nine and 12 years younger than her. And so I try to spend some time just she and I, because a lot of the stuff that I'm doing with her brothers are things that 16 year old girls are not interested in. But yeah, our relationship is great.

[Georgia Howe]

I think a lot of parents probably.

[John Bickley]

Are afraid, first of all, about what.

[Georgia Howe]

Happens to their relationship with their child if they come in too strong, if they're maybe heavy handed. And that's good to hear that your relationship's so good. Broadening out on the larger issue here. There's lots of cases, I'm sure, just like yours, Amber, in terms of parents feeling blindsided by what's going on in the schools. There are some states that do have protections for parents, but many don't. Have you had other parents reach out to you and what advice would you offer them?

[Amber Levine]

Yeah, I've connected with people honestly across the world at this point because of this very issue. I attended a wonderful Summit for parents that three psychotherapists across the world put together for parents. I met approximately 20 to 25 other families who have kids who are going through something similar, and their stories are heartbreaking. To be fair, it's really difficult to hear how impacted parents are because of what's going on with their kids and they feel like they can't speak out oftentimes. So, yes, I've had many people, because I've been so vocal, reach out to me. And I think there are a few things that parents can do to try and mitigate this from happening with, with their kids. First of all, if you can pull your kids out of public school, currently, I just don't feel like public schools and, and I don't blame teachers. I think there are some amazing teachers out there who don't know how to handle their own morals and values, being conflicted with administration, telling them that this is how they have to handle things. I think that's why we're finding a lot of teachers leaving the field. So if you can get them out of public schools. Secondly, we need to pay more attention to what our kids are doing online. I think that a lot of parents are so afraid to let their kids take a walk downtown with a friend, but they let their kids have free reign of the Internet. And I think the Internet is far more dangerous, especially in a wonderful state like Maine where crime rates are very low. Let your kids go explore the outdoor world and have them put the technology away. There's a lot of nefarious stuff going on online. And I mean, we've all fallen down rabbit holes on the Internet, so our kids are no different. So I think that that's another thing that, that parents need to do and you need to connect to your kids. I think that parents too end up on technology far more than they should be. And they're neglecting, not neglecting their kids, but they're not spending quality time with their children anymore. Sit down and have dinner with your kids every night and ask them what their favorite part of the day was. So connecting with your children in a deeper way than just, you know, passing by like ships in the night is really important as well. It's easy to get caught up in the day to day. I work a lot, I get it. I go home, I'm tired at night. But you have to make time for quality family time.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, I for one, never fail to make quality family time.

[Adam Shelton]

I'm kidding, of course.

[John Bickley]

It's really hard. You know, I think a lot of.

[Georgia Howe]

Parents do feel Alone in these circumstances. You mentioned you had one counselor that seemed to be very helpful. You've talked to other parents. There are resources. Do you have any advice in terms of where people should look for help?

[Amber Levine]

Yeah, I have a long list of resources for people that I email out to people all the time. I think one great spot to go to if you're trying to learn more about what's going on with gender, is a great podcast called Gender A Wider Lens. It actually, they. They. They stopped recording last year, but they have a great library of resources. They've interviewed everybody in the gender world at this point. Their names are Stella o' Malley and Sasha Ayyad. And the two women who facilitate that podcast are two of the women who facilitated the summit that I went to. So I've met them in person. They're very compassionate people who really care about these kids and understand that they are going through something heavy. They also really care about what parents are going through. And I do think that oftentimes parents are just this lost population amongst all of this, and they're really struggling. So I think that's a great starting point. And they both have parents groups that meet some weekly, some monthly. And they're all parents who are going through something similar. And it's like anything else. It's like aa, you know, it's a support group of people who really understand and can connect with you in a way that people who haven't experienced this can't. So that's a good starting point. But there's a plethora of resources out there.

[Georgia Howe]

So final question. What is the next step legally for this appeal?

[Adam Shelton]

So the Supreme Court is going to, you know, consider this issue that the school board has until January 28th to reply to the petition. Then it just depends on when the Supreme Court wants to review it. And it's really up to them. But we're very hopeful that the Supreme Court's gonna take a serious look at this, at this case. Cause it does present an issue of national importance.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, many parents across the country would certainly agree with that, I'm sure. Thank you so much, both of you, for coming on the show.

[Amber Levine]

Thank you, John.

[Adam Shelton]

Thank you.

[Georgia Howe]

That was Amber Levine and attorney Adam Shelton. And this has been a weekend edition of MorningW.