Parents win in Pennsylvania court after school was accused of teaching first-graders about gender transition
A group of Pennsylvania parents have emerged victorious in court after they accused a public school district of violating their civil rights when teaching elementary school children about gender transition and gender dysphoria.
According to National Review, a Pennsylvania court ruled in favor of three mothers who brought a case against Mt. Lebanon School District in Allegheny County, Pa.
In the lawsuit, Carmilla Tatel, Gretchen Melton and Stacy Dunn named the district, the school board and a first-grade teacher.
The parents claimed the teacher read a book to six- and seven-year-old students that discussed gender transitioning and played a video in class called "Jacob’s New Dress," which touches on issues like "gender nonconformity."
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The teacher, Megan Williams, also allegedly "explained to her students that sometimes ‘parents are wrong’ and parents and doctors ‘make mistakes’ when they bring a child home from the hospital."
Joy Flowers Conti, a senior judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, ruled last week that the school violated the parents’ constitutional rights by refusing to allow them to opt their children out of specific lessons.
"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," Conti wrote in her opinion.
"Williams’ conduct 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," she continued.
Conti added that Williams’ conduct showed "intolerance and disrespect" for the moral and religious beliefs of the parents. She also stated that the elementary school violated the fundamental rights of parents to "control the upbringing of their young children."
Mt. Lebanon School District and Williams did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.