Victory for Students and Parents: Nevada Public School Agrees to Settlement in ACLJ Lawsuit After Child Was Forced To Read Pornographic Script

The ACLJ is proud to announce a significant victory in our lawsuit against Nevada’s Clark County School District (CCSD) after a child was forced to perform a pornographic monologue in a theater class. After significant testimony was revealed in depositions, CCSD settled with us, affirming the rights of parents and students in the face of inappropriate educational content.

As we told you, this troubling incident began when a 15-year-old student was required to perform a monologue containing explicit material in her theater class. After our claims survived the motion to dismiss, our case entered the “discovery” period, where we requested documents and took deposition testimony of those involved.

During depositions, several school administrators acknowledged the inappropriateness of the content that our client was required to perform. For instance, one administrator stated:

The content that [the client] performed, I believe, was inappropriate. . . . The overall content and language was not something that I felt should have been there.

Another exclaimed:

I do remember the first time I read it, being in shock. . . What was written was not appropriate to be read and performed in a school setting. . . . And so it crossed the boundary.

Furthermore, the administrators indicated that even if parental consent had been obtained, the monologue would still not have been approved because of its explicit content: “We would never have been able to choose books that had that.”

Our client, the student’s mother, felt like she had no choice but to file this lawsuit to protect her child and to set the record straight that her daughter had nothing to do with creating this inappropriate monologue. And now she has successfully defended her daughter in court.

After our client went viral, CCSD received massive backlash from the public, to which it responded: “The Clark County School District is investigating the circumstances surrounding a class assignment consisting of a student-generated writing exercise that produced content not conducive to student instruction” on its X (formerly Twitter) page. This misleading statement led the public to believe that our client’s daughter had written the monologue, which resulted in our clients being the target of many hateful statements.

However, our clients remained silent throughout the litigation and did not respond to any of the horrible statements that were made until now:

This was an especially difficult time for our daughter. The reason her Dad didn’t come to the school board meeting with me was that he was deployed overseas with the U.S. military for a year, then sent to Ft. Bliss for an additional year & a half, recovering from injuries. As any military family will tell you, life can be very difficult for the kids whose parents are deployed. We try to do everything we can to keep their spirits up, but it’s not always easy. Her teacher knew this, but I guess it didn’t matter to her, and we feel she took advantage of a 15-year-old who just wanted to be a good student and get good grades. Our daughter never wanted to be in the public spotlight for something like this, just like most teens would not want that, so this was all very overwhelming and not an easy journey for her.

Our clients are sincerely grateful to CCSD for correcting its extremely misleading statement to the public by clarifying that their daughter did not write the monologue and, in addition, had no involvement whatsoever with its composition.

Many people have reached out over the last few years to ask how our client’s daughter was doing, and they really appreciated that:

We are happy to say she’s doing much better now. She has done community service since middle school, reading to dogs at the local animal shelter almost every week. They are like family to her, and it was a safe place for her to go when all of the chaos was happening around her.

Even with everything that happened, their daughter was still able to graduate with a weighted GPA of 4.625 and was an AP Scholar with honors. Currently, she is in her first year of college and keeps busy writing, singing, and producing her own songs.

Our clients wanted to underscore the following:

Having the ACLJ and Lex Technica representing us, we could not have been in better hands. They are so passionate about everything they do, especially when it comes to kids and protecting them. The ACLJ worked so tirelessly for just a regular family like ours, and we are so grateful for them! They were so compassionate and really understood how hard this was for my family, but most importantly, our daughter. They were such professionals and knew exactly what needed to be done. We have been on this journey for over two years now, and we feel like they are family.

The Evans family would also like to thank the Nevada legislature for introducing Senate Bill 59 that defines “sexual impropriety” by a teacher to include “sharing pornographic or sexually explicit materials.” This would hold teachers accountable for similar actions in the future.

The court has now entered an order memorializing the settlement and ending the case. This case underscores the crucial role parents play in advocating for their children’s welfare and the need for schools to respect and uphold parental rights. Parents have an absolute right to know what their children are being taught, and children should never be subjected to obscene material, particularly in an environment meant to educate and nurture.

The fight is not over, though. The ACLJ is dedicated to ensuring that classrooms are safe environments and your rights are upheld. We need you, as parents, to stay informed and stand up for your children. Reach out to the ACLJ if you have experienced anything similar at ACLJ.org/HELP.