FFLC Secures Religious Victory for Fairfax Teacher
Victoria Cobb, President
Friday, January 3, 2025
Our Founding Freedoms Law Center, in partnership with America First Legal, was successful in getting Fairfax County Public Schools, the 10th largest school district in the nation, to back down and agree to accommodate the free speech and religious freedom of elementary school teacher, Ashley Pak.
FCPS was seeking to force her to undergo special interactive training on "LGBTQ" issues, including their radical transgender policy which includes hiding gender transitions from parents. As a Christian, Ms. Pak was unable to affirm in good conscience that she would comply with their LGBTQ policies which are in clear violation of state law. We are seeing this practice of government coercion requiring teachers to deceive parents and use inappropriate pronouns in numerous other school districts across the Commonwealth, as well.
After receiving our letter, thankfully, FCPS wisely decided to respect her religious convictions and accommodate her. While this is a good outcome, sadly, Ashley Pak's story is just the latest example in woke Virginia school districts where the government seems to forget that its employees have constitutional rights – until, that is, attorneys like ours step in and threaten litigation. In another county, we defended a teacher with the same issue about a year ago.
None of this would be possible without the generosity of all of you who believe in our mission to defend religious freedom and free speech. If you are inspired by Ashley's story, would you please consider supporting our work?
Our generous supporters who issued the 2024 Matching Gift Year End Challenge want us to reach our entire goal of $400,000. This means your gift will still have DOUBLE the impact!
Every year, we depend on the funding from this end of the year campaign to keep the Family Foundation in business. Because of supporters like you, we raised $334,288 of our year end goal. But we are still $65,000 short. If you give by January 11th, your gift will help us meet our budget shortfall!