Judge Raps PA School District for Trans Instruction

Mt. Lebanon, Pa., is a leafy suburb south of Pittsburgh known for its quality of life and its fine public schools.

According to the educators who sit on blue-ribbon panels, the school district is among the best in Pennsylvania if not the country. Its graduates attend elite universities. And parents move to the district for the schools, surveys say. My wife and I moved there 35 years ago for just this reason.

But the vaunted Mt. Lebanon School District now finds itself on the losing end of a significant court decision over transgender education in its public schools. By embracing the radical idea that it was acceptable “teacher prerogative” to instruct first graders that their gender at birth could be wrong, the district staked out a position that was at odds with common decency, common sense, and common Christian conviction.

The case began when Megan Williams, a first-grade teacher in the district’s Jefferson Elementary School spontaneously decided two years ago to observe Transgender Awareness Day by reading noncurricular books which presented gender identity topics to her students. She then told her first-grade students: “when children are born, parents make a guess whether they’re a girl or a boy. Sometimes parents are wrong.” Some of the young children experienced confusion about how that topic personally affected them.

District Superintendent Timothy Steinhauer (who has since retired) testified in the lengthy court discovery that accompanied the case, it was longstanding practice within the district to honor opt outs on subjects parents found objectionable. But the opt outs and prior notice were “always teacher prerogative.”

Steinhauer testified: “We [the District] don’t have any specific guidelines for what you should notify parents about and not notify parents about.” Steinhauer confirmed there were no written procedures on how or whether to notify parents.

But in this instance, past precedent was ignored. Parents were not notified or given the option to opt out. The district unequivocally backed teacher Williams’ own personal preference, which was colored by the fact that her own child of the same age was transitioning from boy to girl at the same time.

One former Mt. Lebanon teacher who still lives in the district finds the conduct the case revealed bewildering and appalling. “I’m glad the judge sided with the plaintiffs, but I am appalled at the school district,” she writes. “This is not the Mt. Lebanon that I grew up in, graduated from, raised my children in and taught in.” (READ MORE: Let’s Just Say It: Transgenderism Is a Mental Illness)

“When I retired from Mt. Lebanon, the school district ALWAYS sided with the parents,” she adds. “We had to be so careful about what we said. This is just unbelievable. I am very disappointed in this town. Mt. Lebanon was always a conservative community. I’m very sorry to hear how Mt Lebanon has changed.”

Likewise, it’s not a district my wife or I recognize anymore. I suspect, however, that’s a sentiment widely shared by many citizens across America whose trust in community schools has been shattered.

As in many liberal enclaves, the prevailing ethos in Mt. Lebanon now puts great emphasis on “inclusivity.” But as the case made clear, their inclusivity is meant only for politically acceptable minority groups. Christians now are perhaps in the minority in our community. If you espouse a Christian worldview, as did the three courageous moms who sued the school district, that is unacceptably intolerant.

In this regard, Mt. Lebanon has changed radically in the time we’ve lived there. It’s not quite Berkeley (California) yet, but it has moved inexorably in that direction. While the Lebo electorate was mostly Republican when we moved here, the school board hasn’t had a Republican elected to it in more than a decade.

And despite the rhetoric of “tolerance” expressed on yard signs and at cocktail parties, in the higher social strata, the only acceptable tolerance is that of the liberal persuasion. On the school board at least, if you cling to your Bible, you are considered deplorable and decidedly persona non grata.

This transition of America — from true tolerance to a widespread embrace of cancel culture, in both urban and suburban settings, even in an outwardly friendly place like Mt. Lebanon that supposedly espouses tolerance — has been well documented by academics on the fringes of the academy, where the transition is most radical.

Theologian Carl Trueman, of Grove City College, has written persuasively on the role “expressive individualism” plays now in the social dynamic of towns like Mt. Lebanon. Tolerance and inclusivity mean not just living quietly and peacefully as a trans person, but changing the pronoun usage of everyone else to conform to your expressive identity.

Consider what happened in a Virginia public school district. The school board recently agreed to pay $575,000, after years of litigation, to settle with Peter Vlaming, a high school French teacher whose employment was terminated in 2018 for refusing to use male pronouns for a transgender student. Vlaming had tried to avoid pronouns altogether and used the student’s preferred name, but was fired after “accidentally” using a feminine pronoun. Vlaming sued, and the Viriginia Supreme Court ruled that his rights were violated.

“I was wrongfully fired from my teaching job because my religious beliefs put me on a collision course with school administrators who mandated that teachers ascribe to only one perspective on gender identity — their preferred view,” Vlaming said. He was represented in his lawsuit by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Social commentator Aaron Renn, author of Life in the Negative World, describes how Christians in this dynamic are treated now in the “negative world.” “In this era,” Renn writes, “society has an overall negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the higher domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and now seen as a threat to the public good and new public moral order.”

Federal Court Weighs in On Trans Instruction

On Sept. 30, Joy Flowers Conti, the senior federal judge in the Western Pennsylvania district court who oversaw the lengthy school court case, issued her decision.

Until the judge’s ruling, Williams’ own personal and subjective standard of gender fluidity and identity was the only acceptable pedagogy on transgender instruction in the Mt. Lebanon School District. When parents objected, administrators treated the parents as religious fanatics, and backed the teacher’s conduct without question or inquiry. The three moms then filed a federal lawsuit, claiming their constitutional rights were violated.

It was a David vs. Goliath legal contest which ended, incredibly, in ignominious and embarrassing defeat for the school district. By issuing a summary judgment, Judge Conti said there was no need for a trial because there was nothing for a jury to decide.

As a matter of law, the judge writes in her opinion that the district and its attorneys didn’t understand the law as applied and interpreted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (based in Philadelphia, which includes Western Pennsylvania).

A lawsuit that got scant local attention ended abruptly (local news outlets ignored it almost entirely, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently covered the story.) Ironically, a case the school district dealt with dismissively — it twice submitted petitions to the judge to have the complaint thrown out — turned out to be a huge win for parental, religious, and constitutional rights in public schools. (READ MORE: What We’re Learning From Pushing Back Against the Trans Crowd)

Summary judgment was entered in favor of all three plaintiffs and against the teacher, three administrators, and the district itself. There were no financial penalties asked for or assessed, but the district will likely be held liable for all of the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs.

As part of her ruling, Judge Conti issued a meticulous 94-page opinion that is must reading for anyone concerned with the drift towards radical activism that now pervades many public schools. Within the 94 pages are the cultural signposts of our modern times.

On page 2, Judge Conti dismisses the “kindness, tolerance, and respect” argument so prevalent among transgender activists.

“There is no evidence in this [court] record of bullying, unkindness, or disrespect toward transgender students in the elementary school attended by the children of Plaintiffs,” Judge Conti writes. “This case involves different beliefs about gender identity.”

One of the parents who objected to Williams’ instruction was Roman Catholic. A second was Mormon and the third religiously unaffiliated but morally motivated. Of the three moms, only one still lives in the district. According to her attorney, she continues to be ostracized and cancelled by some in the community.

“The Parents disagree that gender is a subjective, individual choice. They assert that gender is objective, immutable and determined by God and biology,” Judge Conti writes.

On page 19 of her opinion, Judge Conti relates a telling exchange which presaged the controversy.

On Oct. 1, 2021, six months before the events occurred which triggered the lawsuit, a Mt. Lebanon parent (“not a party to this case”) wondered how Jefferson Elementary School might memorialize LBGTQ month after reading about it in the school newsletter. The parent asked in an email to the school principal: “I was wondering if/how this is acknowledged in the first grade because I am not comfortable with my daughter learning about gender identity at this age.”

Brett Bielewicz, the school principal, replied: “There is no formal introduction or lessons surrounding it at [Jefferson Elementary School], especially in 1st grade. It’s just merely an acknowledgment of inclusivity and awareness to our JES community.”

Nothing formal, but informally yes, as parents in the school would soon discover.

The events that triggered the lawsuit began on March 30, 2022, when Megan Williams, a former student in the district who teaches first grade at Jefferson Elementary School, sent a text to two fellow teachers which read: “Tomorrow is international trans day of visibility. I’d like to read something.”

She was acting on impulse born of personal circumstance. Williams’ child (a biological boy who was the same age as the first graders in her class) changed to using female pronouns the same week that Williams read two transgender books to her first-grade class on “international trans day.”

On that day, the books were read and discussed. If it had stopped there, Williams may have gotten away unscathed.

But after telling students that she’d like to bring her child to school in a month for Take Your Child to Work Day (which teachers were not permitted to do), Williams told students that her boy was now a girl, and she’d be wearing a dress to school. She then told the first graders “when children are born, parents make a guess whether they’re a boy or a girl. Sometimes parents are wrong.”

One confused child raised his hand and said: “But I’m a boy. I don’t want to be a girl.” The aide in the class testified that the student was “upset.” Williams responded, “Yes you are. Talk with your parents about that.”

In more than two years of litigation, the district (whose board president is himself an attorney) steadfastly maintained in repeated court filings that the parents not only had no case; they had no rights as parents to opt their first graders out of transgender instruction.

That argument — that “teacher prerogative” in the district trumped any and all parental rights — was specious, legal observers say. Judge Conti was equally skeptical.

She writes:

Throughout this litigation, [the district and its administrators] have taken the position that in a public school, parents have no constitutional right to notice or to opt their children out of any kind of instruction, regardless of the content of that instruction, the age of the children, or whether the instruction is part of the published school curriculum.…That is simply not the law within the Third Circuit.

She continues:

Refusing to provide opt outs for parents who assert religious and fundamental parental rights objections to transgender instruction to young children, while providing notice and opt out rights for other sensitive secular and religious topics, constitutes disparate treatment and violates the Equal Protection clause.

Though few local citizens seemingly know of the case (due to the news coverage blackout), what made it such a lightning rod is that first graders were involved.

“Who decides how to determine a young child’s gender identity goes to the heart of parental decision-making authority on a matter of greatest importance,” Judge Conti writes.

She further observes: “Concerns about undercutting parental authority are heightened when the children are in first grade and the person trying to influence them is their teacher.”

And court testimony clearly demonstrated that teacher Williams was not the least bit repentant. She believed “I’m in the right here!” and “that she was free to instruct the young, captive students in her class in accordance with her beliefs without giving parents prior notice or an opportunity to opt their children out of that instruction,” Judge Conti writes.

In any other context, this would be called indoctrination. But because it occurred in a Mt. Lebanon public elementary school, and was a type of indoctrination the school board endorsed, it is considered exhibiting “tolerance” and “respect.” That’s how the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette framed it in this column (in fairness to the PG, they did publish my rebuttal).

Of note, Judge Conti drew a sharp contrast with how principal Bielewicz dealt with the parents’ complaint compared to another situation that arose at the school.

In the fall of 2022, after the lawsuit had been filed over the first-grade transgender instruction, a German teacher in the same school was doing some introductory instruction to a fifth-grade class about family-related words in German. In response to one student’s question, the teacher was alleged to have told the class, “I understand biology, and there’s always one mother and there’s always one father.”

After discussing this incident with Assistant Superintendent Marybeth Irvin, Bielewicz, the school’s principal, interviewed every student in the class to assess the damage that had been done to the students.

By contrast, Williams’ earlier violation, the judge noted in her opinion, was not investigated by either Bielewicz or the district.

The judge writes: “Bielewicz characterized the Parents’ position as merely objecting to Williams’ reading books.… The adult aides in Williams’ classroom were not interviewed or consulted at all.… The administrators made public statements in support of Williams.”

This pattern of discrimination on transgender topics explains why the judge ruled as she did.

While parents were not provided any advance notice or the ability to opt their children out from Williams’ outburst on March 31, teachers within the district had on prior occasions provided advance notice and opt outs to students participating in routine activities, including: the Scripps Spelling Bee; dissecting animals in biology; viewing video clips from a television series involving a gay character; and an assembly featuring a therapy dog.

Will Anything Change?

Returning to the chronology of events: when one of the plaintiff parents (Carmilla Tatel) met with school principal Bielewicz on April 5, 2022 to raise concerns about Williams’ conduct, he could not guarantee that Williams wouldn’t teach the transgender content again.

According to the court record, Bielewicz had sent an email to Williams the day before which read: “You got tons of support from top down — trust me!”

He was right. Incredibly, everyone in the chain of command — Assistant Superintendent Irvin, Superintendent Steinhauer, and School Board President Jacob Wyland — expressed public affirmation for Williams and her actions.

No one was disciplined then, nor even now (one shortcoming of the ruling, in my view). Williams and Bielewicz still work at Jefferson. Steinhauer and Irvin are retired, while Wyland still heads the school board.

Until recently, Bielewicz’s public message as Jefferson’s principal read as follows: “I thank you in advance for allowing me the opportunity to ‘be the change we wish to see in our world!’”

As part of the judge’s ruling, change will finally be enforced on him and others in the district. After more than two years of litigation, Mt. Lebanon schools have been ordered to give parents advance notice and opt out of transgender instruction. The total cost of this fiasco to community taxpayers has not been revealed.

“We are pleased that Judge Conti did a detailed examination of the facts and the law, and confirmed what we have said from the start: parental rights and beliefs matter in public education and cannot be disregarded or ignored. We are hopeful the District now understands that and will act accordingly,” says the victorious Pittsburgh attorney David Berardinelli, who very ably represented the plaintiffs.

Will the Mt. Lebanon School District act accordingly in the future? The people who run it haven’t done anything sensible or truly tolerant since the start of this sad affair, so I have my doubts.

A decision on whether the district will appeal the decision is expected on Oct. 21, when the school board meets. Although an appeal might seem ill-advised under the circumstances, modern standards of “tolerance” dictate that it may.

Thomas O’Boyle (tom@beverlyheights.org) blogs on the news (O’Bservations) and co-hosts a podcast (Scattered Seeds Podcast). A former assistant managing editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he previously worked for the Wall Street Journal as a staff reporter and bureau manager in Bonn, (then) West Germany and Pittsburgh. 

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