VICTORY for Pennsylvania Parents Who Oppose ‘Transgender’ Indoctrination for Their Children

For parents with children in the Mt. Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania who oppose “transgender” indoctrination in the classroom, a federal court just protected your right to be notified and to opt out your children.

It should be the other way around, right? Schools should notify parents for permission. Three mothers with children in the school district think so. According to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), they sued the school district.

A teacher, whose own son started calling himself a girl after she read a “transgender” book to him when he was five, read such a book to first-graders and spoke to them about inappropriate things. Do some teachers get off confusing children in this way? Why are they so determined to push deviant sexual behavior on young children?

The Mt. Lebanon School District allows teachers to decide whether to notify parents about “transgender” reading materials and discussions. When the mothers complained that they were not notified, the principal, assistant principal, and the superintendent sided with the teacher.

In their lawsuit, the mothers said the school district violated their federal substantive and procedural due process, free exercise of religion, equal protection, and familial privacy rights. They also alleged that the school district violated their state rights.

The court ruled in their favor last week.

“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,” the court wrote (PDF). “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.”

The court added that it is unconstitutional to give teachers “unbridled discretion” to determine whether to teach “a noncurricular topic—transgender identity” and not notify parents or allow them to opt out based on their religious and moral beliefs.

Oddly enough, the school district provides notice and opt-out rights for other secular and religious topics — but not for “transgender” indoctrination?

“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,” said Vincent Wagner, senior counsel at ADF. “Without notice and a real chance to opt their children out of instruction like this, parents can’t exercise their constitutional rights. We are grateful the district court protected the rights of parents to receive information and be able to make good decisions for their children.”