Donald Trump invited Liberty University student Sage Blair to the State of the Union address yesterday. But who is she?

Among the anti-trans proposals Trump advocated for in his State of the Union address Tuesday night was a nationwide ban on schools acknowledging and supporting trans and gender diverse students’ social transitions without notifying their parents.

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Trump targets trans teen, pushes transphobic law, & praises anti-LGBTQ+ leader in State of the Union

As Daniel Villarreal noted for LGBTQ Nation, Trump claimed that this phenomenon is “going on all over” the U.S. “We can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” the president said.

As an example, Trump pointed to Blair, who attended the address with her grandmother and legal guardian, Michele Blair, at the president’s invitation. The moment was likely the first time many Americans had encountered Blair, who is at the center of a lawsuit over whether her Virginia high school should have informed her parents that she began identifying as a trans boy when she was 14. (According to her grandmother, Sage has returned to using her birth name and she/her pronouns.) She is also the namesake of an anti-trans law introduced by Virginia Republicans in 2023.

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As Assigned Media notes, what is known about Sage’s story comes largely from right-wing media and from her grandmother’s lawsuit.

According to the New York Times and other outlets, Michele Blair, who legally adopted Sage at age two, sued the Appomattox County School Board, several district employees, and a Maryland public defender in August 2023.

Blair’s lawsuit cites the “‘distress’ about her body” Sage experienced “with the ‘onset of puberty in 2019,’” which allegedly included hallucinations, depression, eating disorders, and self-harm. The lawsuit claims that Blair supported Sage’s gender-nonconforming “dress and interests” when she started high school at Appomattox County High School (ACHS) in August 2021.

Around the same time, Sage was diagnosed with “‘severe gender dysphoria’ and related symptoms.” The same day, Sage indicated to ACHS counselor Dena Olsen, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, that she identified as a boy and was told she could use the school’s boys’ restroom. Sage also reportedly expressed a desire to use he/him pronouns and the name Draco, and allegedly told Olsen and another counselor, Avery Via (also named as a defendant), that her parents were not supportive of her gender identity.

During the brief period between August 11 and August 25, 2021, when Sage identified as a boy at school, she reported multiple incidents of bullying and sexual harassment, including threats of violence.

Blair claims she was unaware of Sage’s gender identity and that the school never notified her of her daughter’s social transition. Blair alleges that Sage only told her that she was identifying as a boy at school after Blair discovered a hall pass with the name “Draco” on it. Blair claims that Sage told her she would not have used the boys’ restroom if Olsen had not told her to do so, allegedly citing female students’ discomfort with Sage using the girls’ restroom.

According to the lawsuit, Sage “suffered a psychotic breakdown and decided to run away” after her parents learned of her gender identity. She was kidnapped by an adult man who transported her to Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and was drugged and raped by multiple adult men before being rescued by the FBI, according to Blair’s lawsuit as reported by Law Commentary.

Sage was assigned representation by Maryland public defender Aneesa Khan, who allegedly accepted her trans identity and had her placed in a Maryland Department of Juvenile Services facility for boys, where she was again “sexually assaulted, exposed to drugs, and denied medical and mental health care,” the lawsuit alleges, according to Law Commentary. Sage allegedly ran away from the facility and was taken to Texas by an adult man who “again raped, drugged, starved, and tortured” her before she was rescued by state police, according to the lawsuit.

According to Assigned Media, local news reports and social media posts substantiate the lawsuit’s claims that Sage went missing twice.

As Law Commentary notes, Blair’s lawsuit rests on her claim that ACHS officials had a duty to inform her of Sage’s social transition and that if they had, the traumatic events that followed would not have happened. But as Assigned Media’s Evan Urquhart notes, it’s impossible to know if that would have been the case. Urquhart goes on to note that trans teens who are not accepted by their parents are particularly vulnerable to online predators, and cites a 2013 study indicating that trans young people experience better mental health outcomes when they are accepted and affirmed by their parents.

As the New York Times reports, last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a lower court’s dismissal of Blair’s claim that ACHS officials violated her right to direct the child’s upbringing. A separate claim that the school violated Title IX by acting with “deliberate indifference” to the threats Sage experienced from classmates is currently moving through the courts, according to the Times.

Beginning in January 2023, Virginia Republicans have repeatedly introduced “Sage’s Law,” a bill mandating that schools in the state immediately inform parents when their child comes out as trans. According to the Times, Michele Blair has testified in support of the legislation.

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