Who are Sage Blair and Michelle Blair, Donald Trump’s guests at the 2026 State of the Union address?

Donald Trump seemed to advocate for prohibiting schools from permitting students to socially transition, including changing their name, pronouns, or gender expression, without the consent of their parents, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, reported The New York Times.

At the centre of the issue is Sage Blair, a Virginia teenager whose legal case alleges that school officials made decisions affecting her without informing or consulting her parents. These decisions, the family claims, concerned her safety and well-being at school.

According to a Newsweek report, the Blair family has alleged that following the school’s actions, Sage ran away, was subjected to sex trafficking, and endured significant abuse and trauma.

Who are Sage Blair and Michelle Blair?

Sage Blair, a teenager from Virginia involved in a legal case concerning school authorities and parental rights, was one of Donald Trump’s guests for his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

Michele, a resident of Virginia, filed a lawsuit against the Appomattox County School Board and several of its staff members. According to court documents, Blair is Sage’s paternal grandmother and adoptive mother, as per the NYT.

She has frequently testified in favour of a Virginia bill known as “Sage’s Law,” which would require school officials to inform parents if a student identifies with a gender different from their biological sex. The bill has been introduced every year since 2023 but has not yet been enacted.

What happened?

According to a 2023 court filing in Sage’s lawsuit, a school counsellor met with Sage during her freshman year after a science teacher overheard her telling a friend that she wished to be addressed with a male name and pronouns. The counsellor spoke with Sage, who said she identifies as a boy, before reaching out to her family.

The filing states that the counsellor “told S.B., a diminutive 14-year-old girl with mental health issues, that if she identified as a boy, she could use the male restroom at school", and that Sage indicated her parents were not supportive of her gender identity, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys, the Newsweek report noted.

The plaintiff’s attorneys allege that the school counsellor accepted the statements of a 14-year-old student with significant mental health challenges at face value and failed to inform Sage’s mother, Mrs Blair. They claim the counsellor agreed to use Sage’s female name and pronouns when speaking with her mother, while using her male name and pronouns at school, effectively misleading Mrs Blair about how Sage was being treated.

The legal team also contends that reports of bullying and sexual harassment by male classmates were not shared with Sage’s mother.

The brief mentions that Sage "had a psychotic breakdown and ran away" after her mother came to know she was using the boys' bathroom.

The attorneys also claim in court filings that “she was abducted and raped by an adult male stranger and subsequently taken across state lines to Washington DC and Maryland and raped and drugged repeatedly by multiple men”.

According to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after Sage was located, the school counsellor testified in court, hitting out at Michelle Blair for allegedly failing to support her daughter’s “assertion of a male gender identity", even though Blair only learned of this claim hours before Sage ran away. The court filing notes that Sage was separated from her mother for several months.

In response, the school counsellor’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs did not cite any legal authority showing she had a constitutional obligation to inform Blair of Sage’s decision to identify as male.

The counsellor's attorneys further argued that the complaint "does not factually link" the counsellor's “alleged concealment of information from Blair and testimony in Maryland juvenile court with S.B. running away, being abducted, trafficked, drugged, and raped”.

They also contended that those alleged harms “were not, and could not have been caused” by Sage’s discussions with the counsellor.

Trump on Sage Blair

“In the gallery tonight are Sage Blair and her mother, Michele. In 2021, Sage was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Before long, a confused Sage ran away from home. After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son,” Trump said, according to AP.

According to Trump, Sage endured significant hardship after being placed in an all-boys state facility, but has since overcome those challenges. Today, Sage is described as a confident and accomplished young woman who has earned a full scholarship to Liberty University.

“And who can believe that we’re even speaking about things like this? 15 years ago, if somebody was up here and said that, they’d say, “What’s wrong with him?” But now we have to say it because it’s going on all over numerous states,” Trump said.

In his remarks, Trump criticised the practice of not informing parents and mentioned that no state should be allowed to separate children from their parents or change a child’s gender without parental consent. He emphasised that such actions must be prohibited immediately.