During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Donald Trump appeared to push for a ban on schools from allowing students to socially transition, including changing their names, pronouns or gender expression, without their parents’ consent, The New York Times reported.
At the center of the issue is Sage Blair, a Virginia teenager whose legal case claims school officials made decisions affecting her without informing or consulting her parents. Those decisions, the family claims, were about her safety and well-being at school.
According to a Newsweek report, the Blair family claimed that after the school events, Sage ran away, was sex-trafficked and suffered significant abuse and trauma.
Who are Sage Blair and Michelle Blair?
Sage Blair, the Virginia teenager involved in a legal case involving school authorities and parental rights, was one of Donald Trump’s guests at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
Michele, a Virginia resident, filed a lawsuit against the Appomattox County School Board and several of its employees. According to court documents, Blair is Sage’s paternal grandmother and adoptive mother, according to the NYT.
She frequently testified in favor of a Virginia law known as “Sage’s Law” that would require school officials to notify parents if a student identifies with a gender other than their biological sex. The bill has been introduced every year since 2023, but has yet to be passed.
What happened?
According to a court filing in Sage’s 2023 lawsuit, a school counselor met with Sage during her freshman year after a science teacher overheard her telling a friend that she wished to be addressed by a male name and pronouns. A counselor spoke with Sage, who said she identified as a boy, before reaching out to her family.
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The filing says the counselor “told SB, a tiny 14-year-old girl with mental health issues, that if she identified as a boy, she could use the men’s restroom at school,” and that Sage said her parents were not supportive of her gender identity, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys, according to a Newsweek report.
The plaintiff’s lawyers say a school counselor took the statements of a 14-year-old student with significant mental health problems at face value and failed to inform Sage’s mother, Ms. Blair. She claims the counselor agreed to use Sage’s female name and pronouns when speaking to her mother, while she used her male name and pronouns at school, effectively misleading Ms Blair about how Sage was being treated.
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The legal team also claims that reports of bullying and sexual harassment by male classmates were not shared with Sage’s mother.
A brief mention of Sage “having a psychotic breakdown and running away” after her mother found out she was using the boys’ bathroom.
The attorneys also allege in court filings that “she was kidnapped and raped by an adult male stranger and then taken across state lines to Washington DC and Maryland and repeatedly raped and drugged by multiple men.”
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According to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after Sage was found, a school counselor testified in court and slammed Michelle Blair for allegedly not supporting her daughter’s “assertion of a male gender identity,” even though Blair learned of the assertion just hours before Sage ran away. The court file states that Sage was separated from her mother for several months.
In response, the school counselor’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs cited no statutory authority to show that she had a constitutional duty to inform Blair of Sage’s decision to identify as male.
The counselor’s attorneys further argued that the complaint “does not factually link” the counselor’s “alleged withholding of information from Blair and testimony in juvenile court in Maryland to SB who ran away, was kidnapped, trafficked, drugged and raped.”
They also argued that these alleged damages “were not and could not have been caused” by Sage’s discussions with counsel.
Trump on Sage Blair
“In the gallery tonight is Sage Blair and her mother Michele. In the year 2021, Sage was 14 years old when school officials in Virginia wanted to socially reassign her, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, right? It didn’t take long for a confused Sage to run away from home. After being found in a dire situation by Sage’s parents, they didn’t immediately return to return to her parents in Sage. said their daughter was their son,” Trump said, according to the AP.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, U.S., February 24, 2026. REUTERS/NATHAN HOWARD(REUTERS)
According to Trump, Sage endured significant hardship after being placed in the state’s all-boys facility, but has since overcome those challenges. Today, Sage is described as a confident and accomplished young woman who received a full scholarship to Liberty University.
“And who can believe that we’re even talking about these things? 15 years ago, if somebody was here and said that, they’d be like, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ But now we have to say it because it’s happening in so many states,” Trump said.
In his remarks, Trump criticized the practice of not notifying parents, saying that no state should be allowed to separate children from their parents or change a child’s gender without parental consent. He stressed that such actions must be banned immediately.
