(WND)—A school got caught pushing young students to an explicit porn site, but when a demand letter sent on behalf of parents failed to produce results, the American Center for Law and Justice filed a federal lawsuit.
“Parents should not be forced to choose between public education and their family’s values. The Constitution draws a bright line: Parents, not the state, decide how and when their children are introduced to sexual content. Schools are not free to override that authority or to ‘correct’ the family’s moral instruction through compulsory exposure to explicit material,” explained the legal team.
“When officials discard that line, the courts must restore it. The ACLJ is taking decisive legal action to protect children, vindicate parents’ rights, and compel this school district – and other districts watching – to adopt clear, enforceable policies that respect the Constitution. We are resolute: No student should be forced to view pornography in class. No parent should be kept in the dark.”
The district is the Watertown School District in New York.
The complaint charges that the district forced seventh-grade students to view blatantly pornographic images during class “over multiple days” without any parental notice, consent, or opt-out opportunity.
“What happened in the Watertown City School District was not an accident. It was a constitutional violation of the highest order,” the ACLJ report explained.
It was the seventh-grade art teacher, Bridgette Gates, who “instructed her students to visit an external website displaying the artwork of a highly controversial artist whose work is known for sexual imagery. Despite this knowledge, the link she assigned led directly to galleries filled with uncensored depictions of graphic sexual content – imagery so explicit that news outlets later had to blur it in their coverage,” the report said.
“Even worse, the teacher told students that ‘some of the images were inappropriate.’ Still, she instructed them to ‘ignore them and be mature’ and proceeded to require the children to complete a graded assignment analyzing the pornographic content for up to two weeks,” the ACLJ reported.
Parents were left uninformed and the students, as young as 11 were “confused, distressed, and forced to choose between obeying their teacher and honoring their family’s values.”
When the demand letter originally was dispatched a few weeks ago, the ACLJ explained, “Our clients, Stephanie Boyanski and Jessy Roberts, were horrified to learn that their seventh-grade children were assigned to visit an unvetted website containing graphic sexual images as part of an art project. The teacher, Ms. Bridgette Gates, displayed these images on a Smart Board in class, acknowledged that ‘some images were inappropriate,’ and then instructed students to ‘ignore them and be mature.'”
Parents discovered the school’s behavior only after finding the explicit images on Chromebooks used by their children.
“One of our clients immediately contacted the teacher, who refused to accept responsibility and instead blamed the school’s IT department. Another reported the incident to school administrators and law enforcement,” the ACLJ reported. “The school district later issued a misleading public statement claiming students had simply ‘come across’ inappropriate content – concealing the fact that the teacher assigned the website, knew the content was pornographic, and required students to review it for two weeks.”
Violated were the First Amendment’s right for parents to direct the religious and moral upbringing of their children, and parents’ 14th Amendment liberty interest and procedural due process rights, the ACLJ said.
The legal action seeks for a court order halting the school’s agenda.
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