A group of Pennsylvania parents who accused a public school district of violating their rights by teaching first graders about gender transitioning and gender dysphoria have won their case in court.
Three mothers—Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn, and Gretchen Melton—who each have a first-grade child in Mt. Lebanon School District in Allegheny County, brought the lawsuit against the district, a local school, and first-grade teacher Megan Williams. The parents claimed that Williams, who has a transgender-identifying child, read books to her six- and seven-year-old students about gender transitioning. Williams also showed the class a video titled “Jacob’s New Dress” and allegedly “explained to her students that sometimes ‘parents are wrong’ and parents and doctors ‘make mistakes’ when they bring a child home from the hospital,” according to the National Review.
When parents objected, the school district refused to allow them to opt their children out of these lessons. However, a senior district judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania has now ruled that this decision violated the parents’ constitutional rights.
“A teacher instructing first-graders and reading books to show that their parents’ beliefs about their children’s gender identity may be wrong directly repudiates parental authority,” Judge Joy Flowers Conti wrote. “Williams’ conduct struck at the heart of Plaintiffs’ own families and their relationship with their own young children. The books read and Williams’ instruction to her first-grade students taught that gender is determined by the child – not, in accordance with the Parents’ beliefs, by God or biological reality.”
“[Williams’] conduct showed intolerance and disrespect for the religious or moral beliefs and authority of the Parents,” Conti continued. “A reasonable jury could only find that conduct, without a compelling governmental interest being shown, in the elementary school violated the Parents’ fundamental constitutional rights to control the upbringing of their young children.”
Vincent Wagner, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, commented on the ruling, emphasizing that it is a massive violation of parental rights for school districts to leave parents out of key decisions regarding their children.
“The school district here failed to notify these parents about instruction their young elementary schoolers would receive on the sensitive topic of gender identity,” Wagner said. “Worse, it instructed these kids that their parents might be wrong about whether they were boys or girls—striking at the heart of parents’ role in forming their children’s identity. Parents’ fundamental, constitutional right to make decisions about how to raise their children includes the right to the information they need to make those decisions. Without notice and a real chance to opt their children out of instruction like this, parents can’t exercise their constitutional rights.” This case follows a similar legal battle in Maryland, where a US appeals court recently upheld a ruling that prevented Maryland parents from opting their children out of lessons promoting LGBT ideology.
