Christian Mom Who Spoke Out Against Transgender Policies Blocked From Son’s Graduation: Lawsuit

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Christian mom is suing Portland Public Schools after officials barred her from her children’s elementary school for a year in alleged retaliation for criticizing its transgender policies.

“What the district said was, ‘Be quiet, or we will take your children away from you,’ essentially—at eight hours a day, nine months out of the year, you’re going to essentially take my children from me,” Allison Roberts, the mother, told the Daily Signal in an interview Friday.

Roberts has an elder child who graduated from Meriwether Lewis Elementary School more than a decade ago, and two younger children who both attended the school in the 2025-2026 school year. Yet she missed her son’s graduation from the school this year because police issued a trespass order against her based on what she alleges was a false principal report aimed at silencing her speech against transgender policies.

Roberts is suing Portland Public Schools; the district senior director of schools, Chandra Wilson-Cooper; and Lewis Elementary’s principal, Deanne Froehlich. She claims the defendants violated her First Amendment right to free speech by retaliating against her speech and discriminating against her based on her viewpoint, and violated her First Amendment right to free exercise of religion by imposing transgender ideology.

The ‘Identity Flower’

The case traces back to October when Roberts’ 11-year-old child brought home an “identity flower” assignment from the pro-transgender group GLSEN.

According to the GLSEN lesson plan for the assignment, teachers instruct students to list their “gender identity” in the flower’s “gender” petal. It instructs teachers to explain to students, “You may identify as a girl or a boy. If you don’t feel like a boy or a girl, you might just identify as a person. Maybe none of these words feel like you today. Or maybe you feel like a girl or a boy today, but later that word doesn’t seem to fit.”

After a meeting with the principal, her child’s teacher, and a counselor produced no real answers or results, Roberts drafted an open letter to the school community in January. She stood on the public sidewalk outside the front of the school, distributing the letter.

The Trespass Order

On Feb. 5, while picking up her kids from school, Roberts spoke with another mother and her husband, according to the lawsuit. After Roberts revealed that she had voted for President Donald Trump, the husband reportedly shouted, “White people are disgusting!” Roberts told him that he was being racist and left the area.

The next morning, police served Roberts with a trespass order.

Froehlich, the principal, said the school was banning Roberts from campus for one year for “threatening and intimidating members of the school community.”

The order states that “during dismissal, a parent approached another parent and began engaging in racial harassment, intimidation, and threatening behavior.”

Froehlich and Wilson-Cooper, the school district’s senior director of schools, sent an email to the student body the same day.

“During dismissal, a parent approached another parent and began engaging in racial harassment, intimidation, and threatening behavior,” the email stated. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time this individual has made Lewis families and students feel unsafe. Over the past several months, we have observed a pattern of racial animus and harassment targeting vulnerable members of our community.”

The email went on to state that “hate speech and discriminatory behavior have no place at Lewis.” Roberts denies the allegations and argues that the school falsely characterized her speech.

Threat of Future Action

Roberts penned another open letter to the community. In response, Wilson-Cooper sent an email noting that the letter “specifically names Lewis staff and Lewis community members.”

“This is continued harassment which was the basis of your trespass on February 6, 2026,” the school district leader wrote. “I am sending you this as a written warning to cease all forms of harassment towards any Lewis community and staff members to include written, physical and verbal interactions.”

“Failure to comply with these expectations may result in an extension of your trespass including up to indefinitely and/or across all [Portland Public Schools] campuses.”

Roberts argues that this warning effectively threatened her with permanent exile from the school if she continued criticizing district officials.

Roberts responded with a series of questions, including, “Am I prohibited from discussing Principal Froelich with another parent? Am I prohibited from speaking about Lewis Elementary at a grocery store, on a sidewalk, online, or in a private text message? I am asking PPS to distinguish harassment from protected public speech.”

First Amendment Violations

The lawsuit claims Froelich and the school district violated Roberts’ First Amendment rights through retaliation, discrimination, and by imposing transgender policies with no opt-out provision.

“For time immemorial, going back to the Revolutionary War era, public participation by handing out pamphlets or letters on the sidewalk is something that is afforded the highest constitutional scrutiny and protection,” Timothy Snowball, senior counsel for the Liberty Justice Center’s PARENTS Initiative and Roberts’ attorney, told the Daily Signal in an interview Friday.

He emphasized that the school district characterized Roberts’ speech as “hate speech,” even though the Constitution recognizes no such category. “They made very clear through that statement and other statements that their actions were motivated by what she was saying.”

He also noted that Roberts is challenging the school district’s transgender policies, citing the Supreme Court precedent Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), which upheld parents’ religious freedom to raise their kids according to their faith.

“Portland is not exempt from the Constitution,” Snowball noted.

Portland Public Schools did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.