An excerpt from Monday's long decision by Judge Douglas Cole (S.D. Ohio) in Cahall v. Cole New Richmond Exempted Village School Dist. Bd. of Ed.:
Plaintiff Karen Cahall is a third-grade math and science teacher …. The District, acting through one of the other individual Defendants—Superintendent Tracey Miller—imposed a three-day unpaid suspension on Cahall, asserting that she had violated the District's "controversial issues" policy based on certain reading materials she made available to the students in her classroom….
Cahall maintains a collection of books in her classroom that she makes available to students to read during in-class free time, but that she does not otherwise use in connection with instructing the students. The instant controversy arose when a parent complained about some of the books that Cahall included in that collection. In particular, in light of recent events that had occurred at the school (more on that below), Cahall decided to add four books to her collection: Ana on the Edge; The Fabulous Zed Watson; Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea; and Too Bright to See.
As Cahall describes them, these books "each deal with characters who are LGBTQ+ and are coming to terms with feeling different and excluded simply because they are LGBTQ+." According to Cahall, the books "serve to reinforce [her] sincerely held moral and religious beliefs that all children, including children who are LGBTQ+ or the children of parents who are LGBTQ+, deserve to be respected, accepted, and loved for who they are."…
Cahall says her decision to add these books to her classroom collection grew out of what she describes as an earlier "controversy in the New Richmond District." According to Cahall, just before the 2021–22 school year, the District was considering allowing teachers to "wear Rainbow stickers on their name tags, or to display them on laptop cases or desk nameplates to show that [the teachers] were safe for LGBTQ+ students to confide in or to seek advice from." The District was also considering whether to provide students forms on which they could designate their "preferred gender identity preferred pronouns and name."
