Parents’ Lawsuit Claims School Engages in ‘Intentional Racial Discrimination’ Against White Students

Parents have filed a lawsuit against Villa Duchesne High School in Missouri, claiming the elite Catholic girls prep school has engaged in “overt and intentional racial discrimination against its Caucasian students,” including their daughter.

According to the petition filed in the Circuit Court of the County of Saint Louis, the parents accuse the school of “encouraging and facilitating race-based aggression” against their daughter and attempting to force her to adopt Critical Race Theory.

Colin Wright, managing editor at Quillette, noted the case, Doe et al v. Villa Duchesne, in a tweet thread Wednesday, as did the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The petition claims the “race-based aggression” was:

… promulgated by African American fellow students and through the use of coercion, intimidation, and threats by faculty and administrators to attempt to force Daughter to adopt or espouse the political philosophies of Critical Race Theory, including but not limited to attempts to indoctrinate Daughter into the concept that all Caucasians are racists by virtue of being Caucasian and that African American students should be free from discipline regardless of their behavior.

The parents allege their daughter has been subjected to “verbal attacks and physical threats, social ostracism, false imprisonment, permanent damage to her reputation, and severe and continuing emotional and psychiatric injury.”

According to the parents’ petition, “various fellow students made threats of personal and bodily injury against” their daughter, in order “to ‘teach her a lesson’ because she was ‘such a racist.’”

Additionally, the parents claim one African American student told their daughter she “needs to get smacked in the face” and that she and her friends would “jump her in the parking lot.”

The petition states one African American student accused the daughter of saying, “Black Lives Do NOT Matter” in a class that was video recorded, yet the recording showed no such declaration occurred.

The lawsuit goes on to say that during a meeting with the school’s principal, Jeannie Steenberge, and a faculty member, the two adults allowed the black students to berate and scream at their daughter, calling her “the biggest known racist in the school,” and accusing her of being “in love with Trump” because she owned Trump decals and other merchandise.

“Everyone knows ALL Trump supporters are racist,” the petition claims one black student said.

During another meeting, the parents’ petition says the principal told their daughter she was a racist, and that “we are all racists, we are white.”

According to the petition, when the daughter denied the accusations made against her by the black students, Mesho Morrow, the school’s Dean of Student Excellence, a black woman “who physically displays BLM [Black Lives Matter] support materials at Villa Duchesne,” said the school “would not be issuing any discipline or punishment” to the black students, even though both had engaged in physical and verbal threats against the daughter.

The parents’ claim states that, during the meeting with Morrow and Steenberge, their daughter was “held against her will” and “denied the opportunity to speak with her parents.”

It further alleges the acts committed against the daughter “were done with the specific intent to coerce, intimidate, and threaten “her into “accepting and acknowledging a racist political ideology commonly referred to as ‘Critical Race Theory,’ unrelated to any scholastic purpose.”

The petition adds the acts of discrimination allegedly committed by the school violate the Constitution of Missouri, which states “that all persons are created equal and are entitled to equal rights and opportunities under the law.”