A federal trial court recently delivered a victory for parental rights, recognizing their continued existence in the face of radical LGBT activists’ efforts to usurp parental authority and indoctrinate other people’s children.
First-grade Pennsylvania teacher Megan Williams compelled her young students to “observe” so-called Transgender Awareness Day — subjecting 6- and 7-year-old kids to non-curricular propaganda about “gender identity” and sex changes.
Williams, a Black Lives Matter activist who transitioned her own son who had been in first grade at the time, went so far as to tell the impressionable children in her care that their “parents ma[d]e a guess whether they’re a boy or a girl” and may have been wrong.
Upon learning of this clandestine effort to confuse and indoctrinate their children, parents — who were provided with neither notice nor opt-outs — complained. However, the principal of Jefferson Elementary as well as the superintendent and now-retired assistant superintendent of Mt. Lebanon School District backed Williams.
‘Parents have a Constitutionally protected liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their children, including their education.’
Ostensibly left with no other option, three mothers — a Catholic, a Mormon, and a nonreligious woman, all three of whom believe in the inseparability of biological sex and gender — filed a lawsuit against Williams, the school, the district, and district officials in June 2022 with the help of the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
The parents sought a moratorium on the instruction in the district “on gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning”; parental notice and opt-out rights on the topic absent such a prohibition; compensatory damages; and punitive damages.
The parents’ complaint noted at the outset that “parents have a Constitutionally protected liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their children, including their education,” highlighting the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition both that the “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause includes the right of parents to “control the education of their [children] and that parents have the right “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”
‘I’m in the right here.’
Last week, Judge Joy Conti of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania largely agreed and ruled in their favor, underscoring that:
parents have a constitutional right to reasonable and realistic advance notice and the ability to opt their elementary-age children of noncurricular instruction on transgender topics and to not have requirements for notice and opting out of those topics that are more stringent than those for other sensitive topics.
The parents, whose complaint accused Williams of “grooming” at least one vulnerable child in her classroom, were confounded by how the school and the Mt. Lebanon School District, which had previously provided parental notice and opt-out rights when it came to classroom engagements with sensitive topics — such as the Holocaust, slavery, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, sex education, Black Lives Matter, and Planned Parenthood — effectively made Williams’ LGBT propaganda session mandatory.
Williams, who subsequently stressed, “I’m in the right here,” took full advantage of the leeway afforded her by principal Brett Bielewicz and the district, reading two works of LGBT propaganda to her students: “Why Aidan Became a Brother” by female transvestite Kyle Lukoff and “Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story About Gender and Friendship” by radical LGBT activist Jessica Walton.
‘Williams’ conduct struck at the heart of Plaintiffs’ own families and their relationship with their own young children.’
The first book is about a girl whose parents let her masquerade as a boy, going so far as to let her change her name. The parents in the book tell their cross-dressing child: “When you were born, we didn’t know you were going to be our son. We made some mistakes, but you helped us fix them.”
The second book is about a male teddy bear that tries to become a female teddy bear.
Judge Conti noted in her ruling, “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. Williams’ conduct struck at the heart of Plaintiffs’ own families and their relationship with their own young children.”
The judge noted that Williams usurped parental duties in an effort to inculcate her beliefs about gender ideology in the plaintiffs’ children, causing confusion.
“The students’ confusion in this case illustrates how difficult it is for a first-grader when a teacher’s instruction conflicts with their Parents’ religious and moral beliefs,” wrote Conti. “The heart of parental authority on matters of the greatest importance within their own family is undermined when a teacher tells first-graders their parents may be wrong about whether the student is a boy or a girl.”
Judge Conti went further, suggesting Williams’ conduct “showed intolerance and disrespect for the religious or moral beliefs and authority of the Parents.”
Vincent Wagner, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement, “Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. School districts violate that right by leaving parents out of key decisions about their own children.”
“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,” added Wagner. “Without notice and a real chance to opt their children out of instruction like this, parents can’t exercise their constitutional rights.”
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