A hearing was held Tuesday morning on a case brought by a mother who says when schools allow students access to books containing LGBTQ+ themes, it is a violation of her parental rights.
Katie Allen says she and other parents’ rights to decide what type of material is appropriate for their children to read has been taken away from them.
The hearing before Columbia County Superior Court Judge Sheryl Jolly lasted about an hour and a half.
The case started when Allen’s child at Harlem Middle School checked out an illustrated book called “Drama,” which has two gay characters, one of whom kisses another boy on stage.
She filed a lawsuit in November against members of the school board, a teacher and a principal.
In a statement following the hearing, Allen said parents believe there are laws that say they must be notified and consent to sexual materials made available to children in classrooms.
“This case presents a golden opportunity to clarify the laws in question, and I believe everyone will benefit from a ruling that establishes what can be expected in our children’s classrooms,” she said.
The school board’s spokeswoman Abbigail Remkus said the board couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
“My parental rights have been repeatedly violated,” Allen said in court on Tuesday.
She asked the judge to grant a summary judgment in her favor.
Will Fletcher, representing the school board, said that what Allen asks for isn’t possible as it would “trample others’ rights.”
Her request is too broad and would allow parents to opt their children out of subjects like biology and literature, he said.
“Not only is there a physical and fiscal limitation to what she would ask, but this would also require a definition of sexual materials to include, in her words, human sexual anatomy, activity, behavior and social beliefs including LGBTQ+ materials,” he said. “That is so overbroad that it would draw into subjects like biology, art and literature. There would be no Shakespeare. There would be no biology. There would be no Bible.”
The board’s job is to create policy, Fletcher said. If a judge steps in to create policy, that would strip the board of their power, which they had been awarded as elected officials, he said.
Allen responded that she wasn’t asking for materials to be removed from the school. She simply wanted parents to be notified of the materials and have the option to opt their children out of them.
“If we cannot separate sexual ideologies from academic materials, we need a ruling and clarification of law so parents can know this so we know what to expect when we send our children to public schools,” she said.
Troy Lanier, who is also representing the school board, said that while Allen’s heart may be in the right place, she is addressing her concern in the wrong way. He said the concern would be better geared toward the state legislature.
“Everybody agrees that concerned parents are a good thing,” he said. “If our country needs anything, it’s more rather than less concerned parents.”
Allen’s ask would require over 2,000 teachers in over 30 schools to help notify parents of all references deemed part of the “sexual materials” definition, he said. He asked the judge who would do this work, who would determine what materials qualified and who would oversee this process. He also questioned whether parents would need to be notified of any references to hetero behavior in order to be fair.
He called the ask “impractical.”
The judge said she would take the matter under advisement but noted that the court had a “lot of restrictions on what it can and can’t do.” She also advised Allen that it was in her best interest to have a lawyer who could advise her on “what the law really is versus what our personal interpretations of it are and what we want it to be.”
Allen said she would continue to represent herself in the case.
