Imagine sending your seventh-grader off to school one morning, believing that the adults in the room will protect their innocence. Now imagine that same child coming home shaken because their teacher selected and projected graphic sexual images onto the classroom Smart Board, images so explicit that even the teacher admitted, on the spot, that “some of them were inappropriate.”
That is exactly what happened to our clients, Stephanie and Jessy, after their middle school children walked into Ms. Bridgette Gates’ art class, and it’s why the ACLJ has launched a federal lawsuit against the Watertown City School District – the district that employs Ms. Gates.
Join the effort and take action with us to hold rogue school districts accountable. Sign our petition: Stop Sexualizing and Indoctrinating Our Kids.
Under the banner of an “art project,” Ms. Gates instructed the entire class to visit an unvetted, unfiltered website. No content warning. No parental notification. No age-appropriate safeguards. Just a free-for-all link that immediately served pornography to a room full of minors. When the explicit material was projected onto the giant screen, the teacher’s response wasn’t to shut it down. It was to shrug, acknowledge that yes, some of the images were inappropriate, and then instruct the children to “be mature.”
Let that sink in. A grown educator told 12-year-olds to “be mature” in the face of pornography that many adults would find disturbing.
This wasn’t a one-time “mistake” where a bad link slipped through. For roughly two weeks, the seventh-graders were required – as a graded assignment – to make return visits to the unfiltered website brimming with graphic sexual images. No parental heads-up. No opt-out. No alternative project. Our client only found out by pure chance when they glanced at their children’s school-issued laptop. The teacher’s response was classic deflection: finger-pointing at tech support even though she had already conceded the inappropriateness in front of the class, yet still proceeded with the assignment.
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Then came the gaslighting. The district sent out an appalling message saying students had merely “come across inappropriate content.” Come across? They didn’t stumble onto it while googling Monet. Their teacher assigned it, projected it, and graded them on it for half a month.
And when Stephanie and Jessy showed up at the October school board meeting to demand answers, the reception was chilling. The president of the teachers union rallied staff to pack the room in “solidarity,” canceled after-school activities to boost turnout, and handed out “Fact Over Fiction” pins – snidely referring to the concerned moms as “internet warriors.” Not a single board member stood up to defend the parents or even acknowledge that forcing 11- and 12-year-olds to look at porn for two weeks might cross a line.
And instead of holding the teacher accountable, the school district placed her on leave, only to move her into a seventh-grade English teacher position, putting her back in the classroom with many of the same children she had already harmed. The school district didn’t just fail to protect its students; it trampled parents’ constitutional rights and left children confused and their innocence violated.
The law is clear: Parents have more rights than schools to control their children’s moral education.
Parents Have the Constitution on Their Side
For over a century, the Supreme Court has affirmed that parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. Cases like Meyer v. Nebraska, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, and Troxel v. Granville make this crystal clear.
And just months before this incident, the Supreme Court reaffirmed those protections in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), holding that schools must provide parents advance notice and opt-outs when exposing children to sexually sensitive or religiously objectionable content.
Despite the long and strong affirmation of parental rights by the courts, the Watertown City School District violated parental rights at every turn. No notice. No opt-out. No regard for parental authority.
New York law also requires schools to ensure the safety and well-being of students – and prohibits exposing minors to obscene material. The district’s own policies stress age-appropriate content and materials that promote “sound and healthy values.”
What happened here violates every one of these standards.
Taking Action
The ACLJ is taking decisive legal action to protect children, vindicate parents’ rights, and compel this school district – and other districts watching – to adopt clear, enforceable policies that respect the Constitution. We are resolute: No student should be forced to view pornography in class. No parent should be kept in the dark.
Take action with us and add your name to our petition: Stop Sexualizing and Indoctrinating Our Kids.
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