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A judge found that a teacher who took it upon herself to read unapproved books to first graders to “show that their parents’ beliefs about their children’s gender identity may be wrong” violated “the Parents’ fundamental constitutional rights to control the upbringing of their young children.”
A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that a teacher violated parents’ rights when she, without any notice or opportunity for the parents to opt out, read two books to first-grade students about gender ideology and told the children that parents guess a child’s gender at birth and sometimes make mistakes.
The issue began March 31, 2022, when Megan Williams, a first-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School (part of the Mt. Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania) read two books — When Aidan Became a Brother and Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story about Gender and Friendship — to children in her class for the purpose of teaching them about gender ideology.
Williams has a child who is the same age as the students in her class, though he goes to a different school district. Some of the students knew her son through youth sports. At age 5, Williams’s son began wearing dresses and would sometimes say “I am a girl.” The same week that Williams chose to read the books to the students, her son had said he wanted to have a pronoun change.
Text messages between Williams and other teachers reveal that she wanted to read the books for “transgender day of visibility.” Williams did not seek prior approval either from her superiors or from her students’ parents before reading the books and discussing them. The morning that she began reading the books and had already begun discussing the topic with students, she sent an email to Jefferson Elementary Principal Brett Bielewicz asking if it was permissible for her to share the books with colleagues.
Later that day, well after she had already read the first book and discussed gender ideology with the children, he approved her sharing the books with fellow teachers. Soon after, she shared the books in an email to staff, saying that “today is Transgender Day of Visibility” and “this topic is close to my heart.”
Williams started by discussing Take Your Child to Work Day with her students. This was peculiar considering that teachers are not allowed to bring their children to work. Some of the students who knew her child referred to her son as “him,” to which she responded that her child was now a “she.”
Immediately after saying this, Williams read the book When Aidan Became a Brother. The first line of the book reads, “When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl.” The book goes on to discuss the child’s transgender status, and on page 18 the parents of the child say, “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 students were perplexed by the book. They began to ask questions. For example, they asked Williams, Who decides what gender a child has at birth? She answered by saying the parents decide.
In the afternoon, she read the students “Introducing Teddy,” which contains the line, “In my heart, I’ve always known that I’m a girl teddy, not a boy teddy.”
Teddy’s name is changed to Tilly.
Following the book, Williams had a discussion with the students. She told them, “When children are born, parents make a guess whether they’re a boy or a girl. Sometimes parents are wrong.”
One child became upset and said, “But I’m a boy. I don’t want to be a girl.”
Williams replied, “Yes you are. Talk with your parents about that.”
Some of the students did talk to their parents. Three of those students were the children of Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn, and Gretchen Melton, the three plaintiffs in the case.
Tatel’s daughter asked her, “How do you know that I am a girl?”
Tatel explained their beliefs to her daughter and “have gotten her straight” but said she is still confused, “Because why would her teacher tell her something wrong?”
The plaintiffs all stated that they were forced to have difficult conversations with their children before they felt their children were ready to learn about such a topic.
The record shows that when the parents presented their concerns to Bielewicz and the school district, they were largely ignored. No one investigated the complaints or even interviewed teachers’ aides from the class, and messages show that there was never any realistic consideration of punishing Williams.
Rather the principal and superintendent supported Williams and her decision to read the book and refused to create a written policy that would require that parents be notified of upcoming lessons on gender ideology and be given the chance to opt their children out.
The district responded very differently when the opposing viewpoint was expressed at school. In the fall of 2022, a German teacher was doing an introduction for fifth graders of German family-based words. The teacher answered a question by saying, “I understand biology, and there’s always one mother and there’s always one father.”
This caused the principal to intervene by interviewing every student in the class, though there is no information of what came out of that questioning.
The plaintiffs filed suit claiming that the district had violated their right to direct the upbringing of their children, their right to the free exercise of religion, and their right to due process.
U.S. District Court Judge Joy Flowers Conti has now ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. She explained that her opinion was based on the fact that the district allows parents to opt their children out for a wide range of other reasons and topics — just not gender ideology, writing,
“Absent a compelling governmental interest, parents have a constitutional right to reasonable and realistic advance notice and the ability to opt their elementary-age children out of noncurricular instruction on transgender topics and to not have requirements for notice and opting out for those topics that are more stringent than those for other sensitive topics. 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.”
She went on to explain that Williams decision to read books to the students based on transgender ideology “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.”
That conduct “showed intolerance and disrespect for the religious or moral beliefs and authority of the Parents. A reasonable jury could only find that conduct…violated the Parents’ fundamental constitutional rights to control the upbringing of their young children,” Conti stated.
Williams was never even reprimanded for her actions in reading the books or failing to inform the school or the parents of her plan, which could be why Judge Conti also made it a point to chastise her in the ruling. She wrote:
“A reasonable teacher would have known that her personal desire to observe Transgender Visibility Day was not a compelling governmental interest and that discussing with first-grade students that parents may be wrong about their children’s identity was not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. In other words, it is obvious that a teacher reading books to teach first-grade students that their parents may be wrong about whether they are a boy or a girl would violate fundamental parental rights.”
This was a major violation of parental rights and caused these children real psychological harm. A single teacher chose to introduce her ideology to small children who were a captive audience and implicitly trusted her. She seems to have intentionally hidden this premeditated plan from parents and school administrators so that she could influence young children and shape their beliefs.
When understandably angry parents brought their attention to the principal and school district, they were rebuffed. The administration seems to have shared similar views as Williams and saw nothing wrong with her decision. Yet the ruling shows that they did not take such a cavalier position regarding other topics.
This illustrates the critical importance of parents demanding to know what is in a child’s curriculum and whether the teacher or school is pushing any topics, in this case, gender ideology, not listed in the curriculum. Parents must have uncomfortable conversations with teachers and administrators and convey their expectations that their right to opt their child out of such discussions be honored.
Parents must also realize that many schools are infused with wokeness. If parents don’t take the initiative to talk to teachers, or don’t ask their child what they are learning each day, the district or a single teacher will likely take advantage of that trust.
All it takes is one teacher going outside the curriculum to introduce harmful content to your child. If your children are enrolled in public or school, you as the parent have the right to govern the upbringing of your child.
Parents must proactively exercise that right. And if that right is violated, you must get your child out of the environment as soon as possible to mitigate the harm and then aggressively pursue legal recourse.
As seen in this article, many K-12 schools now embrace the secular woke agenda and are hostile to Christian beliefs and parental rights. Fortunately, parents don’t have to settle for this. Liberty University Online Academy is a K-12 program designed to educate your children in the ways of the Lord while preparing them to stand firm in their faith when they graduate. Our flexible online curriculum ensures that your student is trained at your convenience and keeps YOU the ultimate educator of your children.
