PENNSYLVANIA, USA — The Independence Law Center (ILC) has made headlines throughout Central Pennsylvania this year by working with numerous school boards in the area.
The conservative law firm spoke with FOX43 for the first time about the policies it helps school boards draft in a wide-ranging interview that will air Wednesday on FOX43 News at 10.
The Harrisburg-based firm has been hired as pro bono legal counsel by school boards, such as Warwick, Elizabethtown, Penn Manor, Upper Adams and more this year.
The ILC advises and drafts policy for school districts pertaining to cultural issues in schools, such as whether students can use their preferred pronouns or whether transgender students can use bathrooms or play on a sports team aligning with their gender.
On the subject of pronouns and gender identity, ILC senior counselor Jeremy Samek says policies such as Northern York's which require parents to sign off on a student’s preferred pronouns are meant to keep the parents in the loop and to bring fairness to the district's students.
"When we have very important issues, parents need to be involved in that," Samek said. "This just ensures that there's going to be those type of communications with parents, so that everybody can be on the same page, and that the students and the school district and the parents can all work together to ensure that the kids are being taken care of."
Opponents of the ILC say policies such as these, which include barring transgender students from using bathrooms and playing on sports teams aligning with their identified gender, leads to a higher rate of suicide and thoughts of suicide for young people identifying as queer or transgender.
"These policies create an othering of many of our students that separates them from the rest of the students," said Lauri Lebo, an advocacy coordinator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. "I specifically know teachers who have lost students to these issues, and it's heartbreaking. And instead of focusing on dividing our kids, we should be focused on working together with them."
Another criticism from the ILC's opponents is that the policies it drafts opens districts up to legal liability. The Central Bucks School District paid $1.75 million in legal fees to a separate law firm after the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a complaint to the Departments of Justice and Education over an alleged culture of discrimination against LGBTQ+ students in the district. The district consulted with the ILC at the time.
"The school hired another firm to investigate whether there was bullying happening that the school wasn't taking care of, and those legal fees were fees that they paid for an outside firm to do an independent investigation," Samek said. "Nobody has ever filed a lawsuit against any policy that ILC has drafted."
The ACLU of Pennsylvania disputed this in a statement to FOX43.
"District policies absolutely were part of the complaint," the statement reads. "Changes to district policies exacerbated a hostile environment created by unaddressed bullying. The policies included banning certain library books, prohibiting pronoun and name changes without parental permission, and censoring teachers, including banning teachers from displaying Pride flags in classrooms."
The investigation in 2023 by the firm Duane Morris that was hired by the district found that it did not discriminate against LGBTQ+ students. The ACLU of Pennsylvania called the investigation biased and incomplete.
Part one of the interview with the Independence Law Center can be seen here.