A Portland mother was banned from her children’s elementary school for a year — missing her son’s graduation — after she handed out a letter on the sidewalk asking other parents to join her fight for transparency on gender ideology lessons.
Allison Roberts is now suing Portland Public Schools for violating her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, alleging the district weaponized a vague harassment policy to silence her peaceful advocacy.
The lawsuit, filed by the Liberty Justice Center’s new PARENTS Initiative, seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the Oregon district from enforcing its harassment and nondisclosure policies against Roberts. It also demands the district stop making public statements “denigrating her character” and cease its ongoing investigation.
The district threatened a permanent ban if Roberts didn’t stop her “harassment” — which consisted of distributing letters on public property.
“To this day, Allison remains unaware of what specific speech or other activities the District deems ‘harassment,’ and out of fear of permanent trespass has ceased all speech and petitioning efforts.”
Portland Public Schools Director of Media Relations Valerie Feder declined to comment on the litigation.
‘Identity Flower’ From LGBTQ Activist Group
Roberts, described in the lawsuit as a “liberal” Christian who loves Portland’s “vibrant multi-cultural and gay community,” first raised concerns when her son brought home an “identity flower” assignment.
The materials came from GLSEN, an LGBTQ activist group that recently rebranded to “Glisten” to hide its gay and lesbian origins, according to the lawsuit.
The assignment was “part of a larger lesson encouraging children to question their sex and gender identity” and even consider that their gender changes day to day, the suit alleges. Roberts also learned students were taught about “puberty blockers for transgender youth.”
When Roberts met with Principal Deanne Froehlich to ask how many gender assignments students were given without parental notice, she was ambushed by both of her children’s teachers and a school counselor. Her son’s teacher snapped at her when she pressed for answers, according to the lawsuit.
Roberts received no satisfactory response — and no notice or opt-out opportunity for the following school year.
Sidewalk Advocacy Triggers Trespass Order
In January, Roberts wrote an open letter to other parents criticizing school leaders for rebuffing her concerns. She alleged the school was presenting a “hotly contested subject” as “instructional” and that gender identity lessons “blur the line between same sex attraction and medicalized identity.”
Roberts and a companion handed out the letter on a public sidewalk outside the school — without incident and without targeting students.
But after a “respectful” conversation with another mother during school pickup about PTA matters, the woman’s husband confronted Roberts the next day, grilled her about her politics, and yelled “White people are disgusting!” when she said she had voted for Donald Trump.
The next day, police served Roberts a one-year trespass order alleging she committed “harmful, unlawful and/or disruptive behavior” and was “threatening and intimidating members of the school community.”
When Roberts asked for specifics, Senior Director of Schools Chandra Wilson-Cooper emailed her nothing more than “generalized statements,” saying she violated district harassment policy.
Principal Froehlich sent an email to the school community accusing Roberts of “harassment, intimidation, and threatening behavior” toward “vulnerable members of our community” for the “past several months.” Froehlich said district “teams” for civil rights and social justice were investigating Roberts’ “hate speech” and encouraged parents to report Roberts if they felt “unsafe.”
‘Two Janitors and a Basketball Coach’
Roberts appealed the trespass order. Her hearing panel consisted of “two janitors and a basketball coach” in a half-hour Zoom call with no witnesses and no specifics of her alleged harassment, according to the lawsuit.
The district rejected her appeal two days later. Roberts missed her son’s graduation.
After the graduation she was barred from attending, Roberts wrote a second open letter challenging officials’ allegations and punishments. She passed it out with a family friend on the sidewalk outside the school, “this time offered via QR code.”
Principal Froehlich again criticized Roberts in an email to the school community, calling her speech “antithetical to everything we stand for as a community” and saying the school was responding to “disrupt the harm” she caused.
Three days later, the district threatened a permanent district-wide trespass order if Roberts didn’t stop her “harassment” — evidenced by having “distributed a letter.”
Roberts has stopped speaking on the issue entirely out of fear. She asked the district to clarify the scope of the harassment policy and specify what’s prohibited. The district hasn’t answered.
“The district can’t use vague harassment policies and trespass threats to punish a mother for peacefully expressing her views and seeking transparency about her children’s education.” — Timothy Snowball, Liberty Justice Center senior counsel
Supreme Court Just Reaffirmed Parental Rights
The Portland case comes on the heels of two major Supreme Court rulings on parental rights in public education.
The high court first ordered Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools to notify parents before exposing their children to LGBTQ “storybooks” and let them opt out. Then it issued an emergency order reinstating a permanent injunction against California’s so-called gender secrecy policies, accusing lower courts of ignoring a century of its precedents.
Earlier this month, the California ruling prompted U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney in Michigan to reinstate religious liberty claims against Rockford Public School District’s gender secrecy policies.
“Likely this court made a[n] error of law by relying” on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Maryland ruling as a “narrow and limited decision,” the judge wrote Aug. 7, acknowledging that “at least three” justices rejected that reading.
Portland Public Schools is already under federal investigation by the Trump administration for alleged racial discrimination for giving money to a black-focused program while rejecting funding for an indigenous program.
