A Christian father has filed a federal lawsuit against a Washington state school district, alleging officials violated his religious liberty and parental rights after his elementary-school son was exposed to LGBT-related classroom instruction despite an earlier request for notice and an opt-out.
As reported by JNS, Konstantin Averkiev, whose son attends Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland, Washington, sued the Lake Washington School District, its superintendent and five school board members in federal court. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Alliance Defending Freedom filed the complaint on Averkiev’s behalf, alleging violations of his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion as well as parental and due-process protections under the 14th Amendment.
According to the lawsuit, Averkiev’s son’s fourth-grade teacher agreed in September 2025 to provide the father with notice and an opportunity to opt his child out of LGBT-related lessons. Averkiev alleges he later discovered that his son participated in a Pride Month lesson that included discussion of surgery intended to change a person’s sex characteristics.
The dispute raises a question that reaches far beyond one Washington classroom: How much authority should parents retain when public-school instruction conflicts with their religious convictions about human sexuality and the created distinction between male and female?
The Lake Washington School District disputes the characterization of the lesson. Shannon Parthemer, the district’s executive director of communications, told JNS that the district had reviewed it and said the instruction focused on empathy, inclusion, bullying prevention and creating a sense of belonging at school. According to the district, students examined school-climate information and discussed how bullying and biased remarks affect students, including LGBT students.
Parthemer also said the district recognizes parents’ authority under Washington law to remove their children from sexual-health curriculum and surveys. The district maintains, however, that state law does not provide an opt-out simply because instruction concerns particular identities or groups.
That distinction is now at the heart of a larger religious-liberty battle. For Christian parents who believe Scripture gives mothers and fathers primary responsibility for the moral formation of their children, government schools cannot simply be treated as morally neutral territory. Parents entrust schools with educating their children; they do not thereby surrender their responsibility to teach convictions about sex, family and morality.
Kate Anderson, senior counsel and director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, said parents “have the fundamental right to direct their children’s religious upbringing and education, even at school.”
Averkiev is asking the court for an injunction requiring notice and religious opt-outs. He is also seeking declaratory relief, damages and legal fees. The allegations have not yet been adjudicated, and the district told JNS it could not comment on the lawsuit itself.
Whatever the eventual ruling, the case puts two increasingly contentious principles before a federal court: a public school’s authority to determine what children encounter in the classroom and parents’ constitutional claim to direct the religious upbringing of their children.
