Parents threaten school district for forcing girls to bunk with boys on trips, keeping it secret
The Supreme Court put school districts on notice this spring that they face legal peril for facilitating and hiding students' gender transitions from their parents, which it deemed an infringement of parents' First Amendment rights to direct their children's upbringing.
Some districts are still trying their luck, giving up only when they see the writing on the wall in lawsuits against their so-called gender secrecy policies.
Suburban New York City's Chathams School District threw in the towel to end two-month-old Moms for Liberty litigation, just four months after its board president publicly claimed the SCOTUS emergency order against California's gender secrecy policies in Mirabelli was "not binding" on New Jersey public schools.
Moms for Liberty's lawyers at the Thomas More Society touted the settlement Tuesday, nine days after the parties reached agreement. Local news source TAPinto Chatham published the agreement and the school board's announcement at its Oct. 12 meeting, nearly a month after it unanimously voted to change the policies.
"Now that policy is gone for good, every teacher and counselor in the district will receive a copy" of the legally binding commitments, senior counsel Christopher Ferrara said. School districts that don't follow Chathams' lead "can explain themselves to a federal judge."
Suburban Chicago's Community High School District 128 is facing broader legal action for policies that hide students' gender identity and "gender affirming" literature in the curriculum from parents, compel educators to address students by gender identity, and allow boys who identify as girls in girls' locker rooms, restrooms and even sleeping arrangements on overnight trips.
Represented by the Liberty Justice Center, Illinois parents allege the policies violate last year's Mahmoud precedent requiring parental notice and opt-out for LGBTQ curriculum and this spring's Mirabelli precedent, which confirmed the former is not limited to curriculum without setting an outer limit for applicability.
They aren't the first to test the boundaries of those precedents. North Carolina parents are suing for notice and opt-out from classrooms led by transgender teachers, a Washington mother and daughter for notice and opt-out before competing against males in girls' sports, and West Virginia parents for religious exemptions from school vaccine mandates.
District 128 Superintendent Marc Schaffer, to whom the warning letter is addressed, did not respond to Just the News queries.
The high court has yet to rule on educators' First Amendment rights in the context of refusing to treat students as the opposite sex, which may differ between K-12 and college educators depending on the federal appeals court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals protects university faculty against compelled use of students' preferred pronouns, a precedent cited in the District 128 demand letter despite the fact that it's covered by the 7th Circuit.
The Chicago-based federal appeals court sent a fired Indiana K-12 teacher's case to trial following a new SCOTUS religious accommodation precedent, prompting a settlement this spring before a jury could determine whether "calling students by their last names, without more, would inflict emotional harm on a reasonable person."
But the 4th Circuit upheld the firing of a Maryland K-12 educator, prompting a petition still pending before SCOTUS that received wide support from First Amendment scholars, conservative legal groups, parental rights activists and Republican-led states.
'We don't deserve death threats' from 'reckless lawsuit'
The Chathams settlement agreement cites a state appeals court ruling that New Jersey districts could rescind "gender identity and expression policies," such as the New Jersey School Boards Association "model policy" that Chathams adopted in 2024, because they are "optional."
Its board "repealed and replaced its entire policy manual with all mandatory board policies under a new policy provider" Sept. 14, "and did not readopt" the optional gender identity policies.
It won't adopt them again unless required by federal or state law "compliant" with SCOTUS precedent, the agreement says, specifically citing Mirabelli, Mahmoud and 1972's Yoder, which gave Amish families greater control over their children's education.
Both the board and the parents sought to portray themselves as victims in the dispute.
"We don't deserve death threats that we're getting now every day, about a reckless lawsuit" filed by people who knew "we were changing the policy anyway," board member Mike Ryan said at the Sept. 14 meeting, referring to replacements introduced at its July meeting, a month before Moms for Liberty sued. TAPinto Chatham said two police officers were present.
"Our schools are not secretly making decisions about children behind their parents' backs," Vice President Susan Ross – not the tragic Seinfeld character – read in her opening statement, calling the gender secrecy policy an "older" policy being phased out.
"The parents behind this case endured doxxing and harassment simply for asking their school district to respect their role as their children’s primary educators," Moms for Liberty CEO Tina Descovich said.
Ferrara, the plaintiffs' attorney, dismissed the relevance of a replacement policy that had been introduced but not adopted prior to litigation.
Citing a unanimous SCOTUS ruling for a man suing the federal government even after his name was removed from the no-fly list, Ferrara said it "must be absolutely clear that the policy will not return once the suit is over. And now it is clear."
No way to know if children housed with opposite sex
The Liberty Justice Center's warning letter to District 128 faults its so-called overnight trip policy and Gender Support Guidelines, which "infringe upon parent, teacher, and student rights implicating" the First and 14th amendments and Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination.
Because the first assigns students to lodging on school trips based on gender identity and gives parents only "participating students’ chosen names," parents cannot know whether their children will share "quarters or beds" with the opposite sex, frustrating their ability to "make informed decisions regarding their children’s safety, welfare, and physical privacy," the letter says.
The guidelines unconstitutionally expose children to "ideologically fraught materials" in school libraries and curricula, which are required to incorporate "gender diversity" and gender-affirming literature, without notice and consent as Mahmoud requires, and hide their "transgender status" from parents in violation of Mirabelli, the letter also says.
The "gender affirming" language mandate on employees violates their free speech and free exercise rights, making their refusal to use students' preferred names and pronouns "an actionable disciplinary violation," the letter warns.
By letting male students who identify as girls use girls' restrooms and locker rooms, and directing girls who "raise privacy and safety objections" to different facilities, the district flagrantly violates the sex segregation inherent in Title IX regulations, according to the letter, citing SCOTUS's interpretation of "sex" in its transgender sports precedent.
The district cannot claim ignorance of its federal obligations, the letter says, citing the Justice Department's nearly six months of investigations of Illinois school districts for the presence of "gender ideology" in both curriculum and practices such as opening girls' restrooms, locker rooms and sports to males.
If the district doesn't provide "written assurance" that it will start amending its policies and "ensure all staff are informed of the changes and sufficiently trained," it can expect legal action for violating federal civil rights and Title IX, the letter warns.
"These are not optional protections, and District 128 will be held accountable if it ignores them," said Kathryn Cosgrove, counsel for the Liberty Justice Center's PARENTS Initiative, which has already warned five states about their school districts' gender secrecy policies.
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