Asserts Violation of Father’s First Amendment Rights to Inspect CRT Teacher Materials
WASHINGTON, DC — Across America, school districts–through boards, administrators, and teachers–seek to indoctrinate America’s children with woke, Marxist ideology. Parents are being shut out of their children’s education and essentially told to stand down as schools seek to destroy the sacred relationship between parents and children, including parents’ rights to educate, guide, impart, and share their values with their children. Whether it is Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other Marxist agendas, schools have no constitutional right to silence parents. America’s parents are taking a stand, and America First Legal (AFL) is standing with them.
Today, AFL, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District in Chester County, PA on behalf of Ben Auslander. Mr. Auslander is a father who merely attempted to review the curriculum of his child’s school district that included divisive Critical Race Theory (CRT) instructional materials.
Mr. Auslander had previously followed state law and filed a request with his child’s school district under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law because he wanted to know what instructional materials his child’s teachers were using to teach his child. Mr. Auslander was initially allowed access to inspect the CRT curriculum: material prepared by an outside consultant that cost hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. However, the district’s business manager then told Mr. Auslander he could not take written notes, make photocopies, or otherwise photograph the records.
Days later, Mr. Auslander went to the school board’s administrative office and began taking voice notes on his phone of the materials he was reviewing. He was shut down by a district official who told Mr. Auslander that taking voice notes was a “copyright violation.” The district official then summarily terminated the inspection and ordered Mr. Auslander to leave the premises.
Not coincidentally, documents obtained via a Right to Know request reveal that the district had planned for and colluded with the Pacific Educational Group to deny parents and taxpayers the ability to access and share instructional materials by claiming, without merit, that this would be a copyright violation.
While the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District’s actions prohibiting Mr. Auslander from reviewing instructional materials being used by his child’s teachers shocks the conscious, it follows a pattern of behavior experienced by parents across the United States. Mr. Auslander is today taking a stand on behalf of his child, seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction against the school district for violating his First Amendment rights to make video or audio recordings of any materials relevant to his right to know request.
America First Legal stands with America’s parents and will continue to fight back against school districts that violate the Constitutional rights of parents to know how and what their children are being taught in the the classrooms of the very schools that they pay for with their tax dollars.
Statement from America First Legal Vice-President and General Counsel Gene Hamilton:
“School systems across America desperately try to hide from parents the instructional materials developed by highly paid consultants to indoctrinate our children with critical race theory and other biased, partisan materials. In this case, the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District was so desperate to keep information from the public that it blatantly violated Mr. Auslander’s First Amendment right to document the instructional materials used to develop curriculum in his child’s school. We look forward to continuing to stand up for parents like Mr. Auslander and hold school districts accountable that believe that parents surrender their Constitutional rights when their children walk through the school doors,” Gene Hamilton said.
Read the Complaint here.
To schedule an engagement with America First Legal, please email [email protected].