Investigative journalists recently discovered that 20 Pennsylvania school districts have worked with the Independence Law Center (ILC), a Christian Nationalist legal group that drafts and legally defends anti-LGBTQ+ school policies free of charge. The ILCs policies have led tolawsuitscosting state school districts over a million dollars.Other Pennsylvania school districts have also proposed or adopted anti-LGBTQ+ and book-ban policies virtually identical to the ILCs, but their connections to the ILC remain murky due to blocked open records requests and reports of backdoor dealing, according to the news website In These Times. The ILC ignored the websites multiple interview requests and emailed questions. Related Out candidate Kat Abugazaleh is running a new kind of campaign to fight the fascist playbook The anti-LGBTQ+ Pennsylvania Family Institute launched ILC in 2006. The ILC has financial ties and a history of collaboration with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Christian Nationalist legal advocacy group that has launched several successful attacks on LGBTQ+ rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, including Mahmoud v. Taylor (which gave parents the right to opt their students out of LGBTQ+-inclusive school lessons) and U.S. v. Skrmetti (which upheld a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth).The ILC has filed amicus briefs asking the Republican-tilted Supreme Court to eliminate trans-inclusive school policies on sports and pronoun use nationwide. The group has also defendedconversion therapy, the widely discredited form of psychological torture that purports to change queer peoples sexual orientation or gender identity. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Pennsylvanias West Shore school board is currently considering a policy that would ban trans students from using school facilities matching their gender identity; one that is identical to a policy drafted by the ILC. Other state school districts have discussed policies banningsexually explicit books (often a way to remove content from non-white and LGBTQ+ authors), which are based on ILCs model policies.Some school districts, Elizabethtown and Upper Adams, have signed formal agreements to work with the ILC, even when community members have predominantly opposed such plans at school board meetings. Lancasters Penn Manor School District hired ILC to draft new anti-trans school policies just months after a trans youth died from suicide in the district, the fifth such suicide in Lancaster in less than twoyears. ILC does not even recognize trans and gender-nonconforming children as existing, said Malinda Harnish Clatterbuck, whose transgender son, Ash Clatterbuck, died by suicide around the end of 2024. That fact alone should preclude them from even being considered by theboard.Ash Clatterbucks parents say that their son used to warn about the irrational hysteria around trans youthinherent in the kinds of policies that the ILCloves todraft. Ash Clatterbucks father, Mark Clatterbuck, told the school board, Do not try to tell me that there is no connection between the kind of dehumanizing policies that the ILC drafts and the deaths of our transchildren. But the board agreed to work with the ILC and passed two anti-trans policies months after he spoke out against them.Living in ahostile political environment that dehumanizes [trans youth] at school, at home, at church and in the halls of Congress [had made] life unlivable for far too many of our transchildren, Mark Clatterbuck told In These Times.At first, we would see boards openly talking about their interest in contracting with ILC, said Kristina Moon, asenior attorney at the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania which advocates for student rights. But as local opposition to ILC grew,board members stopped sharing sopublicly, she said. Numerous accounts have shown school board members admitting to working with ILC in secret, the aforementioned publication said, sometimes in ways deliberately meant to skirt transparency and open meetings laws.I think its very obvious [that board members are consulting secretly with ILC], Moon said.But if something has to be taking place in secrecy, Im not sure it can be good for ourstudents.Opponents of ILC worry that if they challenge any districts anti-LGBTQ+ policies, the cases could end up in front of a conservative U.S. Supreme Court, which would likely ensure an ILC victory. Lawsuits against school boards involvement with ILC have already cost school districts over a million dollars. These lawsuits mostly focus on how the involvement violates transparent laws. [District residents must] have the opportunity to observe Board deliberations regarding policies that will affect their children in order to understand the Board members true motivation and rationale for adopting policiesparticularly when policies are prepared by an outside organization seeking to advance aparticular religious viewpoint andagenda, one such lawsuit against the Elizabethtown School District states.Mark Clatterbuck filed Right-to-Know requests demanding all Penn Manor school board communications regarding ILC policies that contain religious language. After a year of stonewalling, the resulting 457 pages of communications showed school board leaders agreeing with community members Christian-based anti-LGBTQ+ arguments, including ones that call queer identities inherently atheistic and say that they trample on the blood of Christ. However, more community members are fighting back against ILCs influence. Elizabethtowns Etown Common Sense 2.0 has been advocating against the sorts of policies that ILC champions and supporting educators who face relentless hostility and demands to police their lesson plans, libraries, and language.The group Pennsylvanians for Welcoming and Inclusive Schools has a searchable map of ILCs statewide presence. The Education Law Center has also been sending letters warning state school districts that may be considering ILC-drafted policies.While some state school districts have recently had their right-wing members voted out in the last election, teachers unions and local students have also started actively protesting anti-LGBTQ+ ILC-style school policies at board meetings, even in districts that retained right-wing board members. [Voters] were so concerned about the extremist action they saw on the boards that it was kind of awake up call: that we cant sleep on school board elections, and we need to have boards that reflect acommitment to all of the students in ourschools, Moon said. We see continued use of those discriminatory policies by school boards just copying the policy exactly as it was adopted elsewhere, she warned. And it causes the same harm in adistrict, whether the district is publicly meeting with ILC ornot.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.