“As long as I am on this earth, I am going to teach children what I feel they need to know.”
These were allegedly the words of Mt. Lebanon School District first-grade teacher Megan Williams, who earlier this year told the mother of one of her students that she would continue teaching about gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning to 6- and 7-year-old students—even if doing so goes against parents’ wishes, according to a lawsuit filed in Pittsburgh federal court on June 8 by three mothers over the matter.
The lawsuit names the school district in the suburb of Pittsburgh, as well as Williams, senior administrators, and school board members over what the parents say amounts to “grooming”—a term used to refer to adults psychologically creating emotional bonds with children to lower inhibitions.
“Williams had private conversations with this young boy, discussing with him the similarities between the boy and her transgender child, again suggesting that the boy might want to wear a dress, at other times commenting to him how the boy and her transgender child had similar interests and the same favorite color, and telling the child that he could be like her transgender child,” the lawsuit states.
“Williams explained to this young boy that ‘doctors can get it wrong sometimes.’ In the course of these private discussions, Williams also told this young boy that she ‘would never lie to him’ and, if the subjects they were discussing came up at home, to say ‘I heard it from a little birdie.’”
The lawsuit argues that this behavior amounts to grooming.
“In other words, upon information and belief, while having private discussions with this young boy about topics related to gender dysphoria, she told the child not to tell his parents about the discussions,” the lawsuit states. “Williams’ ‘grooming’ of this young student is unconscionable.”
The lawsuit adds that the discussions peaked on March 31, 2022—Transgender Day of Visibility—when Williams allegedly provided direct classroom instruction on gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning to her captive audience of 6- and 7-year-old children.
In the course of doing so, she explained to her students that sometimes ‘parents are wrong’ and that parents and doctors ‘make mistakes’ when they bring a child home from the hospital, according to the lawsuit.
After one of the mothers pulled her child out of Williams’s class, she received a call from Williams’s private phone number several weeks later.
“Williams first sarcastically said to Plaintiff that she ‘wanted to applaud her.’ Williams then voiced to Plaintiff that she did not understand why her instruction was a problem. Plaintiff not-so-politely told her of her strong parental viewpoint to the contrary. Williams then said to Plaintiff, ‘As long as I am on this earth, I am going to teach children what I feel they need to know,’ and hung up.
“Under no circumstances was this call appropriate for Williams to make.”
The lawsuit seeks a U.S. district court order prohibiting the school from teaching gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning—or, at the minimum, to require the school to allow parents to opt out of such education.
The lawsuit stresses that the complaints aren’t related to politics, nor is it anti-transgender or anti-LGBT.
“Rather, it is about Plaintiffs’ parental rights and each of their respective decisions not to want their 6- or 7-year-old child to receive first-grade classroom instruction on gender dysphoria or transgender transitioning from their first-grade teacher,” the lawsuit states.
Neither the school district nor Williams responded by press time to messages from The Epoch Times seeking comment on the lawsuit.
