Christian teachers still locked out of the classroom after refusing to 'lie to parents': lawsuit

Two Christian California teachers are advancing legal action against a school district over its gender policy, which a lawsuit alleges compels teachers to "lie to parents" about students' secret gender transitions.

Plaintiff Lori Ann West is a devout Christian and Elizabeth Mirabelli is a devout Roman Catholic. Both work at Rincon Middle School in the Escondido Union School District. Both requested religious accommodation from the district regarding parental notification for the transgender policy, according to the suit. 

"I just looked around the room like, is this real? This is really happening? This seems crazy. This seems like the school wants to take over to be the parent. And as a parent, I would not want that for my own children," West said on the moment she heard about the policy in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

She also said that refusing to comply with the policy could lead to disciplinary actions. 

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"One of the things that also really bothered us was that there was a disciplinary part of this policy that if we didn't follow it, we could possibly be written up, even leading to firing. And that was really where I was like, this is so wrong," she said. 

The teachers have decades of teaching experience under their belts and are on leave following their refusal to comply with the district's policy. 

On Wednesday, the teachers moved to hold the school district in contempt of federal court after the school refused to allow the teachers to safely return to work more than six months after they were placed on administrative leave, and more than two months after a federal court held that the school district was violating their constitutional rights. 

"I believe in the teachings of the Bible… We follow the laws in the Bible. And that's a wonderful thing. And it seems like at my school, we have been put down for that," West said about the district's policy allegedly requiring deception of parents. 

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Mirabelli and West are suing administrators in the district for allegedly violating the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment over the transgender policy. 

"A number of teachers posed a question to our admin team asking when our wider community would be notified about this new policy. We never really got an answer, which made us a little suspicious," Mirabelli said in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

"Both Mirabelli and West are being illegally prevented from returning to their classrooms and both have been punitively targeted in retaliation for their whistleblower actions against the district," the Thomas More Society, which is the legal group representing the two teachers, said.

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"Public schools should never hide information from or lie to parents about a child’s mental health or personal circumstances. And schools should never compel teachers to perpetrate such a deception," the original complaint, filed in April, stated. "Yet, the Escondido Union School District has done just that… Once a child’s social transitioning has begun, EUSD elementary and middle school teachers must ensure that parents do not find out."

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"If a suspicious parent asks a teacher about whether their child has socially transitioned at school, the teacher must simply respond that 'the inquiry is outside of the scope of the intent of their interaction' and that they can only discuss ‘information regarding the student’s behavior as it relates to school, class rules, assignments, etc.,’" the suit said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the district for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.