School districts nationwide have punished employees and censored parents for speaking against their gender-identity policies at school board meetings, soccer games, and in video directed to the community and conversations during classroom breaks.Portland Public Schools went a step further by banning a mother from her children’s school for a year because she engaged in sidewalk advocacy against its secret gender curriculum and social transitions of gender-confused students, claiming her “hate speech” violated its harassment policy, according to a new First and Fourteenth Amendment lawsuit.
Allison Roberts missed her son’s graduation from Meriwether Lewis Elementary School because of the ban, and his younger sister remains at risk of transgender indoctrination from the school’s refusal to notify and let parents opt out their children from such materials and get consent to treat them as the opposite sex, the suit says.
The Liberty Justice Center is representing Roberts as part of its new PARENTS Initiative – Parental Action and Rights Enforcement to ensure Notice, Transparency and Safety.
It’s seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the Oregon district from enforcing its harassment and nondisclosure policies against Roberts, including by ceasing its statements “denigrating her character” and its pursuit of “any official or unofficial investigations against her.” The harassment policy is unconstitutionally vague, with a “circular” definition, the suit says.
“To this day, Allison remains unaware of what specific speech or other activities the District deems ‘harassment,’ and out of fear of permanent trespass” for all district property, “has ceased all speech and petitioning efforts and activities related to the situation,” the suit also says.
The district can’t use “vague harassment policies and trespass threats to punish a mother for peacefully expressing her views and seeking transparency about her children’s education,” senior counsel Timothy Snowball said.
Portland Public Schools Director of Media Relations Valerie Feder declined to comment on the litigation “as a matter of practice.”
Judge admits ‘likely error’ after SCOTUS reaffirms parental rights
As alleged, the district would appear to be in clear violation of two Supreme Court precedents in the past year on parental rights in public education and at odds with decades of First Amendment precedents related to sidewalk advocacy, including from its binding federal appeals court.
The high court first ordered Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools to notify parents before exposing their children to LGBTQ “storybooks” and let them opt out, and then issued an emergency order reinstating a permanent injunction against California’s so-called gender secrecy policies, accusing lower courts of ignoring a century of its precedents.
LJC’s PARENTS Initiative asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta in June to “immediately advise” more than 600 school districts with “secret gender transition policies” to junk them in light of the California ruling or face First and Fourteenth Amendment lawsuits. It also claimed the policies violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
This month, that ruling prompted U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney in Michigan to reinstate religious liberty claims against Rockford Public School District’s gender secrecy policies. He previously allowed Dan and Jennifer Mead’s due process claims to go forward.
“Likely this court made a[n] error of law by relying” on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Maryland ruling as a “narrow and limited decision focused on curricular decisions,” which “at least three” justices rejected, the President George W. Bush nominee wrote Aug. 7. (The 6th Circuit oversees his court.)
The California ruling “arose from a challenge to a substantially similar school district policy,” and Rockford’s policies “likely created a substantial burden on the Meads’ free-exercise rights,” Maloney wrote.
