Father Sues School District for Denying Religious Opt Out

Konstantin Averkiev’s nine-year-old son came home from his Kirkland, Washington, elementary school and described something he’d been taught at school: a lesson on “gender change” surgery. It was the first Konstantin had heard of it.

At the beginning of the school year, he had sat down with his son’s teacher, explained his Christian faith, and asked for one thing: advance notice before any lesson on LGBTQ+-related topics and the opportunity to opt out. The teacher agreed.

Then his son was subjected to the lesson anyway, and no one told him. When Konstantin asked the Lake Washington School District to make sure it wouldn’t happen again for LGBTQ+ instruction and requirements that undermine his son’s religious upbringing, the district refused most of his requests in writing.

Now, Konstantin is suing to protect his parental rights. The Constitution prevents schools from requiring parents to forsake their religious beliefs and allow indoctrination of their children. Such mandates coerce parents to choose between the government benefit of public education and their First Amendment and fundamental rights to raise their children according to their beliefs.

A father stands for his son

Konstantin came to the United States from Belarus and has made his home in Kirkland, Washington, where he’s raising his son to know and live out the Christian faith. That faith shapes how he answers the questions every parent eventually faces—about who we are, what marriage means, and what it looks like to grow up as the boy or girl God created us to be. Konstantin believes teaching his son these truths and protecting him from lessons that contradict them isn’t optional. It’s part of his responsibility as a father.

As his son moved through elementary school, Konstantin found himself having to defend his parental responsibility at school—first with a simple request to his son’s teacher, and then, when that request went unheeded, in writing to the district itself.

The school district overrides Konstantin’s parental rights

In September 2025, just months after the Supreme Court decided Mahmoud v. Taylor, Konstantin met in person with his son’s fourth-grade teacher at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School. He asked for one simple accommodation: notice before any lesson on LGBTQ+-related topics, and the chance to opt his son out. The teacher agreed, but that assurance was not honored.

No notice ever came. Konstantin heard nothing from the school. Then, in June 2026, his son came home describing a lesson on “gender change” surgery—content Konstantin had never been told was coming, let alone given the chance to opt his son out.

When Konstantin raised the issue, the teacher admitted he remembered the earlier request and acknowledged he should have given notice. He sent over the lesson materials: a Pride Month presentation covering same-sex relationships, gender identity, and the “Stonewall Uprising,” originally taught to both fourth and fifth graders. But even those slides don’t tell the whole story. The slides mentioned nothing about the gender-change surgery discussion his son described. So a parent checking the district’s own curriculum materials wouldn’t have seen it coming either. Konstantin wrote the school principal the next day, asking her to preserve and send him the lesson materials, explain what happened, and confirm in writing that his opt-out request would be honored going forward. She never responded.

With his son starting fifth grade that fall, Konstantin turned to Alliance Defending Freedom. On July 27, 2026, ADF attorneys sent the district a formal letter on his behalf, invoking Mahmoud and the Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta. The letter asked for advance notice and an opt out from LGBTQ+ curricula, assemblies, and extracurricular content district-wide. It also withheld Konstantin’s permission for staff to talk with his son about LGBTQ+ topics one-on-one, require him to use pronouns inconsistent with another student’s sex, or require him to share restrooms, locker rooms, or overnight accommodations with a student of the opposite sex.

The district’s response, sent August 5, 2026, rejected nearly all of it. The only opt-out it granted was for sex-education curriculum and surveys, accommodations that state law already requires. Everything else, the district said, was “not feasible” and “practically impossible.” Its letter never mentioned Mahmoud or Mirabelli.

So, according to this policy, a parent has no mechanism to opt out of anything LGBTQ+-related beyond the narrow, state-required carve-out—not the instruction, not the compelled pronoun demands, not the shared locker rooms. Nor would the district promise advance notice—just passive curriculum access that may not reveal everything a lesson will include.

Not once did Konstantin ask the school to change what it teaches students or to rewrite any curriculum. He simply asked for an off-ramp for his son. And this district policy apparently doesn’t include one.

Schools are not substitutes for parents

Two recent Supreme Court decisions made clear that public schools can’t sideline parents when a lesson or policy substantially interferes with a child’s religious upbringing. Mahmoud v. Taylor held that religious parents have the right to notice of—and opt out from—controversial curriculum that undermines their family’s faith and beliefs. And, in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the high court concluded that policies requiring school staff to hide a child’s use of a different name and biologically inaccurate pronouns at school likely violate parents’ constitutional rights because they cut out “the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”

Lake Washington School District’s own letter shows it isn’t grappling with either ruling. It already runs a working opt-out system for sex education and surveys, because state law requires it—proof the district knows how to honor parents’ right to opt out when it wants to. But the district treats state law as the ceiling rather than the floor, ignoring constitutional protections for what the Supreme Court has recognized as “decent and honorable” beliefs about LGBTQ+ topics. If a school can override this father’s objection, nothing stops it from overriding the next parent’s, of any faith, anywhere.

The bottom line

Parents have the fundamental right to direct their children’s religious upbringing and education. No parent—of any faith—should have to choose between their child’s public education and their right to raise that child according to their religious beliefs.

Averkiev v. Lake Washington School District

• September 2025: Konstantin Averkiev meets with his son’s Lake Washington School District teacher to request notice and a religious opt out from LGBTQ+ instruction. The teacher agrees.
• June 2026: Konstantin learns from his son that he has been taught a Pride Month lesson that also covered “gender-change” surgery with no prior notice. The principal does not respond to Konstantin’s follow-up.
• July 2026: ADF sends a formal notice-and-opt-out letter to the principal and superintendent on Konstantin’s behalf.
• August 2026: The school district responds, denying almost every request made in the July letter.
• September 2026: ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Konstantin.