Pennsylvania court rules to protect parents' fundamental rights

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Vincent Wagner regarding a decision on Sept. 30 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Tatel v. Mt. Lebanon School District, a case in which three moms are challenging a school district’s failure to provide them notice and an opportunity to opt their first-grade children out of instruction about gender identity:

“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. School districts violate that right by leaving parents out of key decisions about their own children. The school district here failed to notify these parents about instruction their young elementary schoolers would receive on the sensitive topic of gender identity. Worse, it instructed these kids that their parents might be wrong about whether they were boys or girls—striking at the heart of parents’ role in forming their children’s identity. Parents’ fundamental, constitutional right to make decisions about how to raise their children includes the right to the information they need to make those decisions. Without notice and a real chance to opt their children out of instruction like this, parents can’t exercise their constitutional rights. We are grateful the district court protected the rights of parents to receive information and be able to make good decisions for their children.”

David Berardinelli of DeForest Koscelnik & Berardinelli, one of more than 4,800 attorneys in the ADF Attorney Network, represented the parents in U.S. District Court.

“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,” the court wrote in its opinion. “The heart of parental authority on matters of the greatest importance within their own family is undermined when a teacher tells first-graders their parents may be wrong about whether the student is a boy or a girl.”

By refusing to provide opt-out rights to these parents comparable to opt-out rights given to other parents, the school district violated the U.S. Constitution, the court concluded: “In elementary school, it is constitutionally impermissible for a school to provide teachers with the unbridled discretion to determine to teach about a noncurricular 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.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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