A North Carolina school district that hired a transgender elementary teacher is facing a lawsuit if parents are not allowed to opt students out of the teacher’s class.
A law firm representing several families with children enrolled at Middle Creek Elementary School in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), the largest system in the state, notified the district in a letter on September 15.
“We write to enforce these parents’ constitutional rights under Mahmoud v. Taylor and Mirabelli v. Bonta as well as North Carolina statutory and constitutional law. This letter is sent on behalf of Middle Creek Parental Rights (MCPR), an unincorporated association of concerned parents, and the following specific parents who have children currently enrolled at Middle Creek Elementary School,” the letter reads.
“Our clients have already faced doxxing — including, we believe, from someone who often works for WCPSS,” the letter continues, “and amazingly they have received no assurances from the school system about their safety or the safety of their children at school, which only increases our concerns about the inadequate protection and respect being given to our clients’ rights.”
State Rep. Erin Paré, a Republican, acknowledged in a post on X she has received complaints “from parents and some teachers about a new music teacher at a southern Wake elementary school who is transgender and recently attended a school function dressed in a dress as a biological man,” Breitbart News reported last month.
The letter states that parents from the elementary school “have received only unsatisfactory answers from WCPSS” when asked how they will address students on matters of sexual orientation and gender identity and said issues regarding gender and sexuality have “unsurprisingly already arisen” in the transgender teacher’s class.
“For merely raising concerns about how WCPSS will handle these significant questions and asking that their elementary-aged children not be instructed contrary to their religious beliefs, a speaker from the floor at a Wake County Board of Education meeting called these concerned parents bigots and advocated for expelling their children from the school system,” the letter states.
To avoid litigation, the concerned parents have asked WCPSS for the right to opt out of this teacher’s classes, assurances that no student will be disciplined for not using this teacher’s “preferred” pronouns, that sexuality and gender identity will not be discussed, and for restrictions against the transgender teacher occupying a restroom or locker room with any student.
The letter also notes that some parents have been targeted for doxxing since raising concerns. The law firm gave the school district 15 days to respond.