Breaking: Parents Defending Education sues Croton-Harmon schools in federal court for alleged constitutional violations related to harassment, bullying, DEI policies

The suit, which includes three anonymous Croton-Harmon school district parents, alleges free speech violations and compulsion of students to adopt sex and gender ideas contrary to their beliefs.

Today, June 12, the nationwide conservative group Parents Defending Education sued the Croton-Harmon school district in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, White Plains Division, for violations of students’ rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The 63 page Complaint names the district, the Board of Education, Superintendent Stephen Walker, Assistant Superintendent John Griffiths, and numerous other named district officials including the seven members of the Board. Also participating in the lawsuit are three anonymous Croton-Harmon parents, designated A through C, who believe that their children are being compelled by the district to adopt views contrary to their beliefs and principles.

In a press release also issued today, the group states:

Croton-Harmon’s speech codes bar “unwelcome,” “offensive,” and “hate[ful]” speech based on certain protected classes, but not on all—which permits the district to police speech based on viewpoint. Therefore, some students are protected for views that align with the district’s views, and other students may face punishment because their deeply held beliefs are contrary to the district’s discipline agents.

The district’s policies coerce orthodoxy on controversial issues such as “gender identity,” “sexual orientation,” “race,” “immigration,” etc. While other public schools across the country foster a diversity of thought and ideas, this is not the case at Croton-Harmon. Our members and their students in the district are forced to curtail their speech or keep their beliefs to themselves, for fear they will receive threats or backlash from district administrators.

In the lawsuit’s Prayer for Relief—that is, what it wants the Court to do—the plaintiffs ask for a declaratory judgement that school district Policies 0110, 0110-R, 0115, 0115-R, 0115-E, 5300, 4526, and 4526-R violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. These policies, which the lawsuit refers to as “speech codes,” cover sexual and gender based harassment, bullying, creating a hostile environment based on race, national origin, sex, or gender identity, and include the Student Code of Conduct as well as “Acceptable Use Policies” governing computer and other electronic communications both on and off campus.

The Complaint states that Parents Defending Education is acting in part on behalf of three of its purported members who have children in the Croton-Harmon district. It adds that the names of Parents A, B, and C are being withheld because they “credibly fear that the expression of their deeply held views is prohibited. These views include the opinion that “sex is binary, immutable, and determined by biology rather than someone’s internal feelings;” that “marriage is between a man and a woman;” that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement “is just a rebranded version of common racism;” and that “open border” policies are “destructive and dangerous.”

Other views the lawsuit claims are suppressed in the Croton-Harmon schools are that Israel has a right to exist and that “a biological male who identifies as female should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports.”

Whether the lawsuit has any chance of success, or will turn out to be an overly broad attack on the district’s attempts to institute DEI, anti-racist, and anti-harassment policies, remains to be seen.

We will update this short breaking news report soon as details become available.

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