ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — The Elizabethtown School Board voted 8-1 on Tuesday to approve the hiring of the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center as pro bono special counsel.
The vote came after a protest from opponents of the Center outside Elizabethtown High School and public comment from both sides of the issue.
The ILC has made headlines in Central Pennsylvania, as it has been approved by seven different school boards in the area including Elizabethtown.
Recently, Warwick Superintendent April Hershey resigned following the ILC's approval to advise its school board.
The Center also has been hired by Hempfield and Eastern Lancaster in Lancaster County, and Dover, Northern York and South Western in York County.
The Center advises school districts on policies it says helps protect religious liberties in schools. These have included policies of banning books with LGBTQ+ themes in school libraries, and rights related to transgender students including whether they can play sports, use their preferred bathrooms or use their preferred pronouns.
Protesters outside the high school say the decision to bring the ILC in only serves to divide the community.
"I think that they're just a bunch of hot topic click bait type of policies that really aren't going to do anything except for make a very divided school district," said Alisha Runkle, the president of the non-profit group E-Town Common Sense, on the issues the Center has focused on. "I think that it's going to make people feel unwelcomed and unsafe, and we're better than that."
The lone board member to vote against the hire, James Read, said he believed that rejecting the ILC would serve as a gesture of goodwill to those who disagree with his views as a conservative Christian.
"I believe that rejecting this proposal would go a long way in reaching out to the other side, whatever side that might be, and perhaps begin the process of narrowing the gap between the two factions," Read said.
Board President Stephen Lindemuth told FOX43 following the meeting that he believes the criticism of the ILC is unfair, and that the board is looking to gain an alternate perspective by bringing it in.
"I think some of those are a bit unfounded, really," Lindemuth said. "It's just that with the ILC, we're looking to bring on a special counsel that is really a well rounded organization, I feel that it looks to protect the rights of all students. So I think there's just some confusion over the nature of their policies that they create. They're really not inflammatory."