The ACLU also claims it’s ‘illegal discrimination’ to prohibit teachers from flying gay-pride flags.
The American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania is accusing one of the state’s largest school districts of discriminating against gay and transgender students in part because of a proposed policy that would bar teachers from displaying gay-pride flags in classrooms, and a directive requiring staff members to identify students by their legal name and sex unless parents approve a change.
On October 6, the ACLU filed a federal discrimination complaint with the civil-rights divisions of both the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education, accusing the Central Bucks School District of engaging in “illegal discrimination.” The district has chronically failed “to take reasonable and necessary measures to address persistent and severe bullying and harassment of LGBTQ+ students generally, and gender non-conforming students in particular,” the complaint states.
The left-wing organization also accused district leaders and the Republican-led school board of “enacting blatantly discriminatory practices and policies targeting LGBTQ+ students.”
The complaint was filed on behalf of seven people, whose names and specific allegations — comprising 28 pages of the 72-page complaint — were redacted from the copy released publicly.
School board president Dana Hunter addressed the complaint at the beginning of an emotional and sometimes contentious board meeting on Tuesday night. She said the district is committed to every student and is “resolute and united in its zero tolerance for discrimination, bullying, or harassment of any kind.” The district’s polices, she said, are designed to protect students.
“Should a staff member fail to follow policies, they put student well-being at risk,” Hunter said.
The debate in Central Bucks is just the latest touchpoint in what has turned into a nationwide debate over how teachers and schools should handle students who want to change their name and gender identity in school, but without their parents’ knowledge. In nearby Virginia, the Department of Education released new guidelines last month requiring teachers to obtain written permission from parents before beginning to treat students as transgender. Other school districts, including in Iowa and Wisconsin, have faced lawsuits for helping students to socially transition to another gender without their parents’ consent.
The policies the ACLU is targeting in Pennsylvania have generally been supported by conservative parents nationwide: barring the school staff from socially transitioning students with gender dysphoria without their parents’ consent, allowing community members to challenge library books they believe contain age-inappropriate or sexualized content, and prohibiting teachers from displaying politically divisive flags or other materials in their classrooms.
But to the ACLU, those policies and directives are examples of discrimination targeting LGBTQ+ students. In a prepared statement, Witold Walczak, the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said all students deserve a learning environment where they can “be their full selves without fear of being bullied.”
“Unfortunately, rather than combat the toxic educational environment faced by LGBTQ+ students in Central Bucks, a new school board majority and the administration have exacerbated the problems with new homophobic and transphobic policies that have heightened the climate of fear for this group of students and supportive staff,” he said.
The issues at the center of the ACLU complaint have been bubbling for months in Central Bucks, a suburban Philadelphia school district with 18,000 students that is the fourth-largest school district in Pennsylvania, according to the lawsuit.
The disputed policies and practices include:
- At the end of the last school year, leaders of at least two Central Bucks schools directed teachers to only use student names that appear in a district database on end-of-year awards and certificates. In September, that was expanded to require teachers and staff to refer to students generally by their name in the database, unless it is changed by a parent or guardian. “We’re not doing it,” high school government and politics teachers David Klein told the Bucks County Courier Times last month. “If we adopt what they’re suggesting we’re putting a very, very fragile small minority of kids at risk.”
- Over the summer, the school board passed a new library book policy that allows community members to challenge library books for inappropriate or sexualized content. Books that make it through a challenge process would be removed from library shelves. Opponents, including the ACLU, called it a book ban aimed at censoring LGBTQ-related content. Chris Kehan, a district librarian for 13 years, told the local NPR station that the policy sows distrust of librarians and educators to know what is appropriate for students, saying the policy “is not about kids. It’s about the adults. It’s about those parents who are uncomfortable talking to their kids about real-world issues.”
- In April, district leaders directed school counselors to separate elementary school students by their sex — not their gender identities — for a class called “Human Growth and Development” that addresses puberty and male and female physiology. When the district received complaints that students couldn’t choose to attend the class based on their gender identity, the classes were made virtual and optional.
- In May, an eighth-grade history teacher was suspended with pay after reports say he instructed a bullied transgender student on how to file a U.S. Office of Civil Rights complaint against the district. The ACLU and others alleged the teacher was retaliated against for supporting the student. In a statement that month, Superintendent Abe Lucabaugh denied the charges. “The insinuation that our district would single out a teacher and take disciplinary action because the teacher supports LGBTQIA+ students is defamatory,” he wrote, adding that he couldn’t discuss the details of the case. “I can tell you that all faculty and staff must adhere to a process for reporting potentially harmful events and situations, a process that exists to support student safety.”
The district also has come under fire for a proposed policy that prohibits staff from using their positions or their classroom décor to advocate their beliefs about politics, religion, or sociopolitical issues, including beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity. Under the policy, the district is no longer allowing teachers to display gay-pride flags in their rooms.
In his statement in May, Lucabaugh explained that the flags, “once thought to be a statement of support, are now a flashpoint for controversy and divisiveness in our school buildings” and “have become a symbol of ‘taking sides.’” He said he believes the district’s teachers support all students, though not all feel it is appropriate to hang a pride flag in their classroom.
“Now, all of a sudden,” he said, “teachers who have historically demonstrated love, compassion, and support for all their students, yet choose not to display these flags, are being questioned and in some cases labeled as homophobic or intolerant. That is unacceptable on every level imaginable. These flags have taken on a contentiousness that is pulling our focus away from the support and belonging our students deserve, and they are dividing our community at a time that calls for healing.”
Lucabaugh has accused local media of taking his comments on these issues out of context and relaying only portions of his messages to create a “false narrative that is wholly unacceptable.”
Tricia Doebler, a parent of two elementary-age children in Central Bucks, was one of about 40 community members who spoke during a two-hour public-comment session at Tuesday’s meeting. Doebler, vice chair of the new Bucks County Moms for Liberty group, said the debate has divided the community.
“The room, you can feel the heaviness, the contentiousness, the hate coming,” she told National Review. “It’s sad. This is a community that comes together incredibly when there is a tragedy, or when somebody is in need. It is very sad to see it so divided right now.”
Doebler spoke in favor of the district’s policies, which she described as pro-parent and pro-family. There appeared to be more people at the meeting opposed to the policies. Doebler spoke about helping her son through health troubles he’s experienced, including a surgery he had as a toddler and a seizure he had when he was four.
“I kissed every boo-boo. I’ve wiped every tear,” she told the board. “To think there are teachers, administrators, and board members who feel they know better what is needed for my child, who feel they need to keep my child safe from me, is truly laughable.”
Mara Witsen, a Central Bucks resident, told the board that teachers “who choose to deceive parents and keep secrets with minor students should be terminated.” Teachers and school staff should not be making life-altering decisions about treating gender identity issues without parents’ knowledge or approval and against their wishes, she said.
“You are not equipped nor legally allowed to make decisions that undermine parental authority and the mental-health care that they might already be receiving,” Witsen said. “What makes any teacher think that a student not old enough to consent to their own field trip can give informed consent to be socially transitioned? By deciding that you know better than their parents and medical professionals, you may cause irreversible damage.”
Opponents of the board’s policies called them “transphobic” and “morally abominable.” One former teacher called the policies “warthogs, ugly and dangerous.” He said policies that allow the so-called deadnaming of students are a “codified form of child abuse.” Another woman compared using a student’s legal name and sex against his or her wishes to denying food to students who suffer from food insecurity and not aiding students who are abused at home.
CJ Weintraub, a Central Bucks student who uses they/their pronouns and wore a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt, told the board members that their policies amount to discrimination.
“We deserve to have the opportunity to decide when we are ready to come out,” she said. “The people proposing and supporting these policies have never had to feel the fear that your loved ones won’t love you anymore because of who you are.”
The ACLU is calling for the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to investigate Central Bucks and to order the district to implement measures recommended by the DOE for supporting transgender and gender non-conforming students in school.
Hunter, the school board president, noted that the district has not yet received official notice of the ACLU’s complaint. She called on the organization to release to the district an unredacted version of the complaint and to bring forward any specific allegations of discrimination, harassment, or bullying.
“The anonymous and hidden nature of this information,” she said, “makes it impossible for our administrators, school counselors, and teachers to do the critical work of connecting with these unnamed individuals to intervene and address any possible bullying or problematic situations, to activate support and resources, and to implement corrective actions with the goal of bringing about positive change.”