In September, I spoke with Allison Roberts, a mother and lifelong Portlander who asked her son’s elementary school why a Pride flag had been painted onto a bench out front, and why her 10-year-old had come home with a worksheet asking him to fill in his “gender.” When the school ignored her questions, she handed out a letter to parents on the sidewalk informing them of her concerns.
The school went scorched earth on her, interpreting this as a form of “harassment.” For her so-called offense, the school went so far as to send police to her home to serve a trespass notice banning her from her son’s school for a year.
She wrote yet another public letter, and at that point, the school decided to ban her from all Portland Public Schools locations for life. Everything she and her husband had built for their two children—including a home that would allow them to be part of the school community—was being attacked for her simple act of exercising her First Amendment right.
So she took the school district to court.
Two weeks ago, the district finally relented. Just days before a federal judge was set to hear Roberts’ request for a preliminary injunction, Portland Public Schools agreed to a settlement, according to the Liberty Justice Center, which represents her. The district rescinded its trespass notice against her, withdrew its formal warning against her, and acknowledged her First Amendment right to hand out literature on a public sidewalk and criticize school officials. Additionally, the district will approve her requests to exempt both of her children from LGBTQ2SIA+ curriculum this school year, and has promised to review its anti-harassment policy within 60 days—including changes Roberts herself proposed.
Good news, to be sure. But the fact that it even got to this point is a stunning indictment of so much of the educational system, which has been infected by a rot that sees parents as the enemy. The idea that a mother handing out a few flyers on the street constitutes harassment is ludicrous on its face. The school, obviously, was trying to protect itself from having its curriculum interrogated, but herein lies the problem: far too many schools around the country have weaponized their own policies against parents so they can hide what they’re doing.
According to Roberts’ lawsuit, her principal had called her speech “antithetical to everything we stand for as a community,” after which the district labeled her second letter “continued harassment.” When she appealed her ban, she’d told me in September, it was heard over a 30-minute Zoom call by a basketball coach and two janitors.
At what point did we decide that antagonizing parents was an acceptable thing for schools to do?
This should have been a settled matter to begin with. In 2025, the Supreme Court held in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have a right to opt their children out of instruction that burdens their religious exercise. While Portland granted Roberts’ exemptions only after she sued, other Portland parents, the Liberty Justice Center says, have been told exemptions aren’t available at all.
The fact is, there are probably many more cases like Roberts’, both in Portland and around the country, that parents have probably not taken to court—not wanting to cause drama, not being able to access lawyers, not having the time or energy to pursue a formal case. Those parents—and their children—also deserve consistent policies that enable them to trust their schools.
Although Roberts is now allowed back into her children’s schools, Liberty Justice Center is continuing its case against Portland Schools, as Portland Public Schools is still defending the policies at the heart of the rest of Roberts’ case that allow school staff to withhold information from parents about their child’s “gender identity” or social transition at school.
When I first spoke with Roberts, she told me getting back on campus was secondary to her broader goal, which was a “sea change.”
“What I really want is for people to feel emboldened to speak up,” she said.
Hopefully, now that she has been cleared to be on campus, more parents will feel emboldened to do so.
