WI: Activist Law Firm Sues Over Teacher’s Transition Announcement

WILL, a firm which focuses on litigating conservative causes, is suing the Eau Claire school district in Wisconsin over a records request for a transgender teacher’s coming out announcement.

by Evan Urquhart

A public records request requesting that a Wisconsin school district turn over the announcement of an orchestra teacher’s gender transition was fodder for more than 10 stories in the right wing press yesterday, including the usual suspects of Fox News, the National Review, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Wire, and several others. Many stories stress that parents weren’t notified in advance that their children were going to learn that a teacher was transitioning, although none provide any reason why the parents should have been, and it’s not the subject of the lawsuit.

screenshot from the Daily Wire

These stories, which do not differ significantly on the facts, all include information culled from the lawsuit and an accompanying press release by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. The press release included quotes from one of WILL’s attorneys, Cory Brewer, and Leah Buchman, a parent who has three children in the district. Many stories have also included a written statement from the school district that has been widely distributed.

The stories all summarize the lawsuit’s claim that middle schoolers in the orchestra for Northstar Middle School in Eau Claire Wisconsin, including two of Buchman’s children, were called into the orchestra room on June 5th where they were informed that their orchestra teacher, Ms. Puccio, was transitioning as a transgender woman and how to address her. (The teacher’s former name is used in all the stories, including in the mainstream Leader Telegram, but information publicly available on the district’s website suggests her full name is Carly Beilke-Puccio.) Students were then given the option of leaving the room or hearing their teacher tell more of her story, none left, and they then heard the teacher talking about how she’d struggled due to a lack of support from friends and family as a young person. The suit alleges an unspecified mention was also made to some sort of surgery.

The lawsuit itself is not directly related to what Puccio said to the middle school orchestra at Northstar, but consists of a request that the school provide a statement that they allege was read to certain elementary and high school students to inform them of the teacher’s transition. The suit claims another of Buchman’s children, who is in high school, was present for one reading of this statement. Both Buchman and WILL requested that the school provide them with copies of what teachers told the children, the records weren’t immediately forthcoming, and they are now suing to force the school to realease them.

In a statement disseminated to multiple outlets, the district said they haven’t provided the records due to an ongoing investigation, which they opened after receiving inquiries from parents. Here’s the full text, according to a conservative wire service:

screenshot from the Center Square

It turns out that this is not the first lawsuit that WILL has filed against this Eau Claire school district. According to a story by Wisconsin Public Radio in March, WILL is one of two law firms involved in an unsuccessful attempt to sue Eau Claire over its policy of ensuring that children who come out as trans at school are not prematurely outed to unsupportive parents. That suit failed on standing because none of the parents involved had children who had been impacted by the policy.

The Eau Claire district was also accused of being "the worst violator of parental rights” in an opinion column for Fox News in March of 2022 by Ian Prior, a Senior Advisor at America First Legal which, by an interesting coincidence, was the second law firm involved in the above-mentioned lawsuit. Prior’s opinion column employed overheated rhetoric accusing the school of furthering a progressive political agenda and called on parents to use Freedom of Information Act requests to “fight back against woke school districts.”

screenshot from Fox News

It was not immediately clear when or why conservatives first singled out Eau Claire for national attention. However, in 2022 the district was the site of a contentious school board race featuring a slate of conservative candidates who tried, and failed, to take control of the school board on a platform that included complaints about the district’s policies on trans inclusion.