PITTSBURGH - The Mount Lebanon School District will pay more than $350,000 to a lawyer who alleged parents' civil rights were violated when first-graders were taught the concepts of gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning.
Judge Joy Flowers Conti on Oct. 31 approved a consent judgment between the parties, about a month after she ruled against the school district and granted summary judgment to Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn and Gretchen Melton.
Conti's order only provided $15 to the plaintiffs, and their lawyer David Berardinelli obviously wanted more than a cut from that. To end the litigation, the school district agreed to pay him $350,015.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in June 2022. First-grade teacher Megan Williams and Superintendent Timothy Steinhauer were among the defendants.
The suit claimed that Williams, a first-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, a part of the Mount Lebanon School District in Pittsburgh, violated the parents’ rights when she inserted her personal beliefs around gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning into her first-grade classroom.
Williams allegedly played a video called “Jacob’s New Dress” for her six- and seven-year-old students, read from books whose subject matter included gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning, explained that her child had worn an “Elsa dress” for Halloween and “explained to her students that sometimes ‘parents are wrong’ and parents and doctors ‘make mistakes’ when they bring a child home from the hospital.”
The suit went on to say that the child of one of the plaintiffs explained to his mother that Williams had told him, “I can wear a dress and have hair like my mom," and that Williams chose to speak with one of the plaintiff’s children about gender dysphoria repeatedly and supposedly told him not to tell his parents about their conversations.
“Defendant Williams is the mother of a transgender child who, like her students, is in the first grade. While that may give her unique perspectives and views on gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning, it does not give her the right to impose those views on a captive audience of six- and seven-year-old children. This is particularly true given that the scope of the Grade 1 Curriculum which is published to parents includes no such instruction, let alone such instruction that is not given by a professional counselor,” the suit said.
“Williams’ unrequested and unconsented to teaching of these topics is in large manner no different than, and as equally improper as, an unsolicited approach by a neighbor that raises these topics with a young child. On another level, however, it is far worse – because her role as a teacher gives her a unique ability to influence the young children in her class. She used plaintiffs’ children as part of an unconsented to social/thought experiment to fulfill her own personal agenda.”
Conti rendered an opinion on Sept. 30, that found for the plaintiffs and closed the case through a granting of summary judgment. According to the judge, the plaintiffs not being given the opportunity to opt their children out from these topics not included in the school curriculum violated their constitutional rights.
“There are many controversial topics in society. In elementary school, it is constitutionally impermissible for a school to provide teachers with the unbridled discretion to determine to teach about a non-curricular topic – transgender identity – and not to provide notice and opt out rights based on parents’ moral and religious beliefs about transgender instruction, while providing notice and opt out rights for other sensitive secular and religious topics," she wrote.
“Refusing to allow notice and opt outs for religious and fundamental parental rights objections to transgender topics, i.e., forcing young children to be exposed to particular instruction over the objections of unwilling parents, while permitting notice and opt outs for other sensitive topics – is not neutral and constitutes an improper use of governmental authority."