The Supreme Court ruled last year that schools cannot strip Christian parents of their right to opt out of LGBT lessons.
Woke school administrators didn't think the law applied to them.
Now a Washington school district is about to find out what defying the Supreme Court actually costs.
Christian Parents Were Promised an Opt-Out Before the School Taught Gender Surgery Anyway
Konstantin Averkiev sat down with his son's teacher at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland, Washington last September and made one simple request: keep his boy out of any lessons on LGBT topics. The teacher agreed.
Nine months later, Averkiev found out his son had been taught about gender-change surgery during a Pride Month lesson – with no warning and no chance to pull him out.
The presentation covered same-sex attraction, transgender identity, and the Stonewall riots. His son told him the class discussion went even further than the slides.
He wrote the principal but got no response.
The Lake Washington School District covers Kirkland and Redmond, east of Seattle, and pushes LGBT content through every level of its elementary curriculum.
When Averkiev returned at the start of his son's fifth-grade year and formally requested opt-outs – this time with Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys behind him – the district said no.
All of it. The pronoun mandates, the counseling sessions, the gender-identity lessons.
The district granted exactly one opt-out – for sex-education curriculum and health surveys – and only because state law left it no choice.
Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Over Religious Freedom and Parental Rights Violations
Alliance Defending Freedom filed the federal lawsuit – Averkiev v. Lake Washington School District – on September 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The 28-page complaint names six district officials personally: Jon Holmen, Lisa Guthrie, Lindsey Yocum, Aspen Richter, Eric Laliberte, and Angela Meekhof.
ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson laid out the constitutional argument.
"Washington state officials can't force parents like Mr. Averkiev to give up that right or accept a burden on their children's religious upbringing in exchange for the benefit of public education," she said. "Our Constitution forbids schools from indoctrinating children with the government's views on sexuality and gender – hotly debated and sensitive topics – that substantially undermine their religious upbringing."
The lawsuit demands a declaration that the district's no-opt-out policy is unconstitutional.
It seeks injunctions, compensatory damages, attorney fees, and asks the court to retain jurisdiction to enforce every word of its order.
The filing also charges the district with forcing the boy to "adopt and mouth the government's viewpoint" – and compelling him to share spaces with opposite-sex students or lose access to school activities like overnight trips.
Lake Washington School District Defied Mahmoud v Taylor and Got Sued for It
This is not a gray area.
In June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mahmoud v. Taylor that schools violate the First Amendment when they force LGBT lessons on children whose parents object on religious grounds and strip those parents of any opt-out.
Lake Washington had that ruling on the books when Averkiev made his formal request this year. Officials reviewed it and said no anyway – approving only the single opt-out state law required and rejecting everything else.
That is not a good-faith compliance posture. That is a school district betting it can run out the clock.
ADF is also pressing a second Supreme Court precedent, Mirabelli v. Bonta, which blocked California from secretly facilitating gender transitions without parental consent. That case went further than Mahmoud – the Court ruled that secretly transitioning a child behind a parent's back was an even greater violation of religious liberty than forcing LGBT storybooks on them. Schools, the Court said, cannot "cut out the primary protectors of children's best interests: their parents."
Two Supreme Court rulings. Six named officials. They ignored all of it – and now a federal judge gets to decide what that costs them.
Christian parents have been told for years that the courts won't protect them from this.
The Supreme Court proved that wrong in 2025. A federal judge in Washington is about to prove it again.
Sources:
- Tyler O'Neil, "Washington Father Sues School District for Denying Religious Opt-Out for 5th Grader from LGBTQ Instruction," Fox News, September 9, 2026.
- Alliance Defending Freedom, "WA Father Sues School District for Denying Religious Opt-Out from LGBTQ Instruction," ADF Legal, September 9, 2026.
- Susan Crabtree, "Exposing Young Children to Graphic Sexual Content: ADF Demands School District Scrap or Overhaul Curriculum," Real Clear Wire / WorldNetDaily, August 14, 2026.
- Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. 522 (2025), SCOTUSblog, June 27, 2025.
