A Lexington parent won a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit he filed against Lexington Public Schools and some of its staff regarding opting his child out of material that “normalizes” LGBTQ+ relationships.
“We are very pleased with this outcome. This decision represents a major victory for families of faith not just in Lexington, but across Massachusetts,” Sam Whiting, the Lexington parent’s attorney from the Massachusetts Family Institute, wrote to the Observer. Plaintiffs are also represented by The American Center for Law and Justice, an organization which aims to “defend churches and defeat the Left’s war on our Christian faith.”
“Public school districts are now on notice that they cannot ignore constitutional protections for parents without facing significant liability,” Whiting said.
The order from US District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV came a few months after the US Supreme Court decision Mahmoud v. Taylor. The decision of that case supports parents’ rights to opt their children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ+-related materials to protect their religious beliefs.
The LPS parent, who is referenced as “Alan L.” in the lawsuit, is a devout Christian and holds a biblical view of marriage, gender, and sexuality. He believes that he, not the state, should shape the moral and spiritual formation of his child — who is referenced as “J.L.” in the court papers — exclusively from a Christain worldview, court papers state.
Alan L. first filed a complaint on Oct. 17 against LPS; Lexington’s School Committee; LPS Superintendent Julie Hackett; Gerardo Martinez, the principal of Joseph Estabrook Elementary School; and Andrea So, LPS’s director of elementary education. He alleged they stalled on his requests to opt J.L. out of lessons that normalize LGBTQ+ relationships and burdened his right to direct the religious upbringing of his child. The district has an opt-out policy for “curriculum that primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality issues.” LPS did not fulfill Alan L.’s opt-out request because it was too vague, court documents show.
One month after filing that complaint, on Nov. 6, Alan L. moved for a preliminary injunction. LPS opposed that motion on Nov. 19. The Court held a hearing on the preliminary injunction motion on Dec. 12. The judge granted Alan L. the preliminary injunction on Dec. 30.
Now, what is a preliminary injunction?
A preliminary injunction is a temporary court order issued early in a lawsuit to prevent a party from taking a specific action.
In this suit, the preliminary injunction prohibits LPS from sharing materials that “depict or describe LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or activities, or LGBTQ+ political or social advocacy” with J.L. at school. The order names “Families, Families, Families!” and “All are Welcome” — both of which were named in Alan L.’s Oct. 17 complaint — among several other books J.L. cannot be exposed to. It also names various lesson plans, including materials on diversity, equity, and inclusion and science modules as lessons J.L. must be pulled from. One of the off-limits science lessons, called “Earth Our Home,” aims to teach students how the sun, soil, water, and air connect to make up the planet, how plants and animals exist in the environment, and how people can take care of the Earth.
“The District will suffer significant hardship if forced to parse through and arrange to opt J.L. out of materials that ‘depict in any manner’ LGBTQ ‘relationships, lifestyles or identities,” Andrea So, LPS’s director of elementary education, explained in her affidavit, which was filed on Nov. 19.
Educators and LPS staff will have to take extra time to sort through materials and find replacement lessons to teach J.L. so he meets state educational requirements, So noted in her affidavit. Educators and staff will also have to decipher whether J.L. should be pulled from future lessons and material because they work again his father’s religious beliefs. The subjective nature of that duty places a heavy onus on LPS, Sasha M. Gill, an attorney representing LPS in this case, explained in an email to the Observer.
“When parents request their student be opted out of broad swaths of the public school curriculum — as was the case here, with the parent asking to be opted out of all DEI and Health curriculum — it puts the burden on the schools to presume what materials might be objectionable. This is not like a student with a peanut allergy, where the implementation of an accommodation to protect the student is reasonably clear. Schools are burdened enough without having to scour the pages of a storybook for potentially gay-appearing characters. At what point, for instance, is a character’s hair cut too short to presume they are a woman? Are two men sitting together at a restaurant presumed to be gay, or might they just be friends? There are innumerable scenarios like these, and schools are now being forced to make near-impossible judgments,” she argued.
LPS is also being represented by Douglas I. Louison. Gill and Louison work for Louison, Costello, Condon & Pfaff, LLP, a Boston-based law firm that specializes in personal injury and civil rights law.
Over email to the Observer, Gill argued this case does not mirror Mahmoud v. Taylor as the plaintiff suggests.
“The Supreme Court made it clear that depicting the mere existence of potentially offensive values or lifestyles is not enough to warrant an opt-out, and that it is the messaging associated with those potentially offensive materials that determines whether an opt-out is warranted. In this case, the materials are not associated with any LGBTQ+-focused curriculum or paired instruction, nor was the student even exposed to the two books at issue,” she wrote.
J.L. is on a “Behavior Intervention Plan” and an “Individualized Educational Plan,” or IEP, which requires him to spend “more of his school day outside his general-education Kindergarten classroom than inside it,” Gill and Louison noted in their Nov. 19 response to Alan L.’s request for a preliminary injunction. It therefore cannot be assumed J.L. attended the read-alouds of “Families, Families, Families!”, or “All are Welcome Here”, as Alan L. claims he did, Gill wrote.
As for what’s next, Gill told the Observer she and Louison “look forward to aggressively defending against these claims.”
The attorneys representing Alan L. hope to “set a precedent that will benefit all Massachusetts families” through this suit.
“We will continue litigating this case until we can provide our client with permanent relief,” Whiting wrote to the Observer.
I was surprised to read that “broad swaths of the public school curriculum” contain this material, maybe that was a mistake? , who makes these decisions?
Why is sexual freedom of choice a large part of a child’s education?
Gay people exist.
There are gay parents, gay teachers, and gay staff at Lexington Public Schools.
Acknowledging that some children live with same-sex parents isn’t teaching “sexual freedom.” It’s teaching that different families have different sets of people, and all children from all types of families are welcome in Lexington Public Schools.
The only people talking about sex are the people who want to erase GLBTQ+ people from existence in Lexington. I wish they talked more about love.
My kid went to the school in question. At no point was sexuality discussed with kids, with the exception of the opt-in/out sexual health classes given in 5th grade. This parent is complaining about picture books that depict families (not sex), and also about books that show people caring about planet earth. He should send his kid to a private school or home school because there’s no way to meet his child’s needs without impacting negatively all the other children.
What gives people the right to prioritize one expression of love over another? That is really what is at stake here
I’ve said this before and it bears repeating. Kudos to the LPS system for providing curricula that acknowledges and embraces the extraordinary diversity of all people living on this planet, and teaches that all people (of all races, ethnicities, faiths, abilities, sexual orientations, gender identities, citizenship and immigration statuses, socioeconomic circumstances, etc.) be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. What lesson could be more important? Anything less would be a disservice to our youth. Erasure of “the other” would be of incalculable harm to all concerned.
Unless this child is going to be locked in a tower, he is bound to come in contact with people who have different views and live their lives in different ways. Asking a public school to provide only curriculum that aligns with a parent’s particular religious views is unreasonable. If the most important concern is to keep the child from encountering anything the parent objects to, then he won’t thrive in public school.
This lawsuit is not about protecting a child from “objectionable” material. That’s the fig leaf. This is just another battle in the culture war against public education stoked by organizations like The American Center for Law and Justice and the Massachusetts Institute for Family. What an utter waste of everyone’s time.
I wish schools would focus more on their core mission (reading/writing English, STEM) and less on recruiting new Democrats. How many Republicans or donors to Republican political candidates are there in LPS, compared to Democrat or Socialist? Tell me that is diversity!