School districts that allegedly retaliated against a parent and school counselor for comments on their LGBTQ-related decisions tagged out of the ring this week, settling First Amendment lawsuits brought by a public interest law firm with 17 wins at the Supreme Court in the past 15 years and another founded by a top Trump administration official.

The Alliance Defending Freedom said Indiana's South Madison Community School Corporation paid $195,000 in damages, attorney's fees and costs to resolve its three-year-old lawsuit on behalf of Kathy McCord, allegedly fired for confirming to a journalist the district was surreptitiously hiding students' identification as the opposite sex from their parents.

The Hoosier State banned gender secrecy policies in schools shortly before McCord sued, though Superintendent Mark Hall implied in an email to a parent that the new law didn't apply to its "gender support plans," which McCord internally opposed because "she felt like she was lying to parents" by not telling them about their children's in-school gender identity.

Daily Signal correspondent Tony Kinnett had already obtained a gender support plan, which the Indiana district adopted without a board vote or public notice but became known by word of mouth, when he told McCord her email to teachers regarding a student with a gender support plan was circulating, the suit alleged.

The district said it fired McCord because she provided "statements known to be false or made without truth or accuracy to Tony Kinnett," whose article caused a local uproar against SMCSC, and she "lied to the administration regarding Mr. Kinnett’s access" to the gender support plan he published, both of which are false, the suit says.

"No American should be fired for expressing her beliefs, especially not an educator speaking in her personal capacity, on her own time, and out of concern for her students," ADF senior counsel Vincent Wagner said.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon's Center for American Liberty said Nevada's Clark County School District paid $10,000 in legal fees to resolve its October lawsuit on behalf of Kimberley Clark, blocked by the district's social media when she "commented respectfully" but critically in several posts about a "Progress Pride" flag in her daughter's classroom.

The district, the nation's fifth-largest, also unblocked Brock from its social media and changed its social media terms of use as part of the settlement. 

"CCSD will not hide, delete, or remove content solely on the basis of viewpoint, and these Terms of Use will be applied in a viewpoint-neutral manner," it says, also creating a warning and appeal procedure that specifies violations before banning commenters.

"Parents can no longer be silenced or retaliated against for opposing the gender and sexual ideologies being pushed in our school district," said Brock, who called out CCSD on social media when it ignored her query to the district's "online Q&A portal" on why it "encourages minor children to explore their sexuality" but doesn't hang American flags in class.

The financial terms don't appear to be mentioned in the court docket in either case, or in districts' statements to the media, which nonetheless reported the financial claims by the plaintiffs' lawyers as fact.

CCSD didn't answer when Just the News asked if CAL's $10,000 payment figure was correct, writing in an email that "following collaborative efforts between CCSD and the Plaintiff, a federal judge approved a settlement agreement that resulted in revised terms of use for CCSD’s social media channels" that will apply to Brock's "social media use moving forward."

"While the District feels confident it would have prevailed on the only remaining claims if they had proceeded to trial, the parties have now reached a settlement" so the district can "avoid the significant time, expense, and disruption of continued litigation and to allow the District to remain focused on serving students," SMCSC told Fox 59 without mentioning financial terms. It didn't answer Just the News queries.

The district incorrectly claimed that U.S. District Judge Richard Young found it "did not violate [McCord's] First Amendment rights," when his ruling on the parties' motions for summary judgment allowed her First Amendment free-exercise claim to proceed while dismissing McCord's First Amendment retaliation, compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination claims. 

Young also greenlit McCord's Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim. The judge approved the joint stipulation to dismiss the case with prejudice Tuesday, which ADF announced Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Anne Tram granted the stipulation to dismiss the CCSD case with prejudice Tuesday as well, specifying that "attorneys’ fees and costs be handled pursuant to the Settlement Agreement," which is not in the docket. 

She had previously rejected the parties' request to "retain jurisdiction solely for the purpose of resolving disputes related to the enforcement or alleged breach of the parties [sic] Settlement Agreement," because Tram "had no involvement in formulating the terms of the settlement agreement."

ADF didn't answer a request to view the SMCSC settlement to verify the $195,000 figure or see the breakdown by damages, fees and costs, while CAL said it would provide the CCSD settlement to verify the $10,000 payment but did not by deadline.

District got it backwards: 'Parents are FERPA’s primary rights holders'

The suburban D.C. school district rebuked by the Supreme Court for refusing to notify or let parents opt out their young children from LGBTQ "storybooks" is facing new scrutiny for allegedly violating an even more recent SCOTUS parental rights precedent.

America First Legal, co-founded by President Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller, asked Dhillon's Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy Office to investigate Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools for adopting the same gender secrecy policies that SCOTUS blocked March 2 in the California case Mirabelli.

While MCPS claims the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act "requires concealing student records from parents," in this case "gender identity and gender transition information," it gets the law "exactly backward," AFL's April 7 letter says. "FERPA restricts disclosure to third parties, but parents are FERPA’s primary rights holders, not third parties."

AFL, whose co-counsel is fiery First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza, asked the feds to determine the MCPS secrecy policy violates FERPA, make it change policies that require staff to "conceal material student information from parents," and ensure parents have full access to records on a "student’s identity, name, pronouns, and social transition."

It should also force MCPS to train students on "compliance and the constitutional rights of parents" and consider "enforcement proceedings and withdrawing federal funds."

Unlike SMCSC's hidden gender support plans, MCPS's are laid out in a public Board of Education handbook on gender identity. 

When a student comes out as "transgender" or "gender nonconforming," the school principal, "in collaboration with the student and the student’s family (if the family is supportive of the student), should develop a plan to ensure that the student has equal access and equal opportunity to participate in all programs and activities at school," it says.

A section titled "Communication with Families" reiterates that families are not consulted by default, directing staff to "speak with the student to ascertain the level of support the student either receives or anticipates receiving from home."

If there's "safety concerns or lack of acceptance," staff will develop "a student-led plan that works toward inclusion of the family, if possible, taking safety concerns into consideration as well as student privacy, and recognizing that providing support for a student is critical, even when the family is nonsupportive," the handbook says.

"MCPS’s policies are functionally indistinguishable from those that the Court doubted in Mirabelli" by cutting parents "out of critical decisions about their children’s identity and well-being based on the school’s assessment of the parents’ viewpoint," which requires the most demanding standard of judicial review, AFL told the feds.

The policy also violates parents' free-exercise rights by requiring students to share "private facilities with members of the opposite sex, even when doing so conflicts with their families’ sincerely held religious beliefs," and forcing students who don't identify as the opposite sex but not gender-confused students to "accept segregated alternative arrangements," AFL said.

MCPS told Bethesda Today it knew about the complaint and implied it hadn't updated the gender identity handbook since the Mirabelli decision.

"Our district’s handbooks and guidelines undergo review at least once a year to ensure they are current and effective," spokesperson Liliana López said. "We remain committed to supporting all students while ensuring our policies fully comply with the law."