But for people who want to squelch Naughty Ideas, the work is never done. The new wave of ILC policies is a reminder that for these folks, no amount of book banning is ever enough.
Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.
Of course, they only have one particular God in mind.
The founder, president, and CEO of PFI is Michael Geer. Geer started out as a journalist, including almost a decade as senior news producer at WPXI in Pittsburgh. Geer is a regular voice in conservative meetings, church gatherings, and media coverage. He’s opposed to legalization of marijuana, women’s health care options, non-traditional marriage, and freedom to read for students.
In 2006, PFI set up the Independence law Center to do pro bono work “that litigates and advocates on behalf of the sanctity of life, marriage and family and religious liberty.” Wenger has been the chief counsel since the center’s inception. He’s a ninth-generation Lancaster County Mennonite who decided early on that he wanted to be a religious liberty lawyer.
Samek, who joined in 2015, is senior counsel. Samek has been a school board member (Franklin Regional), spent eight years as an attorney with Eckert Seamans in Pittsburgh, and before that was a staff sergeant in the USAF reserve. His law degree is from Pitt; his undergraduate work was done at Liberty University.
The center has handled some high profile cases in the past; Wenger has been to the Supreme Court twice. A decade ago he took Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp v. Burwell to SCOTUS, where it was paired with the more famous Hobby Lobby case that decided that employers’ free exercise of religion allowed them to refuse to provide insurance to cover types of health care with which they disagreed (in this case, birth control).
ILC has been consistent in representing pro-Christian, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion points of view. So it should be no surprise that in recent years they have been plenty busy with work in school districts.
ILC has worked in a number of school districts around the Commonwealth.
In 2012, Wenger worked with ADF to provide cover for a school board in Mercer County that wanted to “solemnize” its meetings with a prayer. That year they were also involved in a dispute between the Harrisburg school district and Child Evangelism Fellowship over release time allowing the group to “feed lunch to participating elementary students (off site) and also feed them truth from God’s word.”
In 2017, ILC teamed up again with ASDF for a lawsuit against the Boyerstown Area School District, alleging that the district was promoting sexual harassment of students by allowing trans students to use the locker rooms for their identified gender. Though they aimed for the Supreme Court, SCOTUS chose not to hear the appeal of the Third Circuit ruling in favor of the district. ILC also involved itself in a similar case involving a trans student in Virginia.
In 2019, ILC took the Mechanicsburg district to court because it was prohibiting students in Christians In Action from handing out Bibles during lunch (the district’s policy banned handing out all non-school literature).
In 2020, they warned 50 Pennsylvania districts that they were illegally targeting students’ religious speech.
Many of these cases are highlighted on ILC’s page of “case news.” They are less forthcoming about their other growth business—quietly writing discriminatory policy for right-wing school board members.
The Central Bucks school board famously became the poster for right-wing culture panic takeover, launching a batch of anti-LGBTQ, anti-reading policies, while steadfastly refusing to tell non-right-wing members of the board exactly who was “helping” write those policies.
But some metadata showed that at least some of those policies had passed across Jeremy Samek’s desk, and when former board Vice President Leigh Vlasblom moved on to a job with the right-wing Leadership Institute, Vlasblom bragged that during her board tenure she had “worked extensively with PA Family Institute, Independence Law Firm, Keeping Kids in School PAC, Hope 4 PA, and Bucks Families for Leadership.”
When pressed, Central Bucks board President Dana Hunter finally admitted working with ILC’s Samek, arguing that since he was working pro bono, she had no obligation to inform other board members – or district parents and taxpayers. Offering pro bono "help" writing repressive policies has been an ILC standard plan.
Other districts have worked closely with ILC to draft policies to ban books and trans athletes. When Hempfield’s school board worked on book restrictions and trans athlete restrictions in 2022 and 2023, their board not only used ILC advice for crafting the policies, but met with Wenger in executive session.
Central York School District drew considerable attention for what was, in 2021, the highest number of books banned in the country. FOIA requests pulled emails that showed that to manage the fallout and try to hold onto the policy, the district turned to ILC. The emails between Superintendent Peter Aiken and Samek were heavily redacted, but the tone was certainly chatty (“Let’s grab lunch again soon man,” writes Samek to Aiken at one point).
In the Red Lion District, ILC helped craft anti-trans policies about which bathrooms trans students may use, which sports teams they may join, and which pronouns they may use.
In one case, ILC returned to the scene of earlier work. Dover Area School Board hired the firm, for free. Dover previously made news 20 years ago when the board required that the science department teach Intelligent Design, yet another attempt to mask religious values in secular language. The district was challenged in court and lost. One of the attorneys who filed briefs on behalf of the district was Wenger, who at the time was working as a lawyer for the Foundation for Thoughts and Ethics, the Christian “think tank” that produced the intelligent design text that Dover used.
Samek, who joined in 2015, is senior counsel. Samek has been a school board member (Franklin Regional), spent eight years as an attorney with Eckert Seamans in Pittsburgh, and before that was a staff sergeant in the USAF reserve. His law degree is from Pitt; his undergraduate work was done at Liberty University.
ILC and school districts
In 2012, Wenger worked with ADF to provide cover for a school board in Mercer County that wanted to “solemnize” its meetings with a prayer. That year they were also involved in a dispute between the Harrisburg school district and Child Evangelism Fellowship over release time allowing the group to “feed lunch to participating elementary students (off site) and also feed them truth from God’s word.”
In 2017, ILC teamed up again with ASDF for a lawsuit against the Boyerstown Area School District, alleging that the district was promoting sexual harassment of students by allowing trans students to use the locker rooms for their identified gender. Though they aimed for the Supreme Court, SCOTUS chose not to hear the appeal of the Third Circuit ruling in favor of the district. ILC also involved itself in a similar case involving a trans student in Virginia.
In 2019, ILC took the Mechanicsburg district to court because it was prohibiting students in Christians In Action from handing out Bibles during lunch (the district’s policy banned handing out all non-school literature).
In 2020, they warned 50 Pennsylvania districts that they were illegally targeting students’ religious speech.
Many of these cases are highlighted on ILC’s page of “case news.” They are less forthcoming about their other growth business—quietly writing discriminatory policy for right-wing school board members.
But some metadata showed that at least some of those policies had passed across Jeremy Samek’s desk, and when former board Vice President Leigh Vlasblom moved on to a job with the right-wing Leadership Institute, Vlasblom bragged that during her board tenure she had “worked extensively with PA Family Institute, Independence Law Firm, Keeping Kids in School PAC, Hope 4 PA, and Bucks Families for Leadership.”
Other districts have worked closely with ILC to draft policies to ban books and trans athletes. When Hempfield’s school board worked on book restrictions and trans athlete restrictions in 2022 and 2023, their board not only used ILC advice for crafting the policies, but met with Wenger in executive session.
Central York School District drew considerable attention for what was, in 2021, the highest number of books banned in the country. FOIA requests pulled emails that showed that to manage the fallout and try to hold onto the policy, the district turned to ILC. The emails between Superintendent Peter Aiken and Samek were heavily redacted, but the tone was certainly chatty (“Let’s grab lunch again soon man,” writes Samek to Aiken at one point).
In the Red Lion District, ILC helped craft anti-trans policies about which bathrooms trans students may use, which sports teams they may join, and which pronouns they may use.
In one case, ILC returned to the scene of earlier work. Dover Area School Board hired the firm, for free. Dover previously made news 20 years ago when the board required that the science department teach Intelligent Design, yet another attempt to mask religious values in secular language. The district was challenged in court and lost. One of the attorneys who filed briefs on behalf of the district was Wenger, who at the time was working as a lawyer for the Foundation for Thoughts and Ethics, the Christian “think tank” that produced the intelligent design text that Dover used.
The list goes on and on. In Warwick, the board hired ILC prompting the superintendent to resign. Penn Manor School District hired ILC to whip up some anti-trans policies just months after a trans student committed suicide in the community.
The ILC has been so busy that a map maintained by Pennsylvanians for Welcoming and Inclusive Schools helps track the ILC presence in Pennsylvania districts.
But if you think all this successful cracking down would cause ILC to lay back and relax, well, not so much.
Another leap forward in book banning
ILC created an even broader version of a book ban, starting off in places like Bermudian Springs School District and Pequea Valley, where, according to Meredith Willse at York Daily Record, schools passed a restriction against books or any other material that "offends good taste or propriety." Now a similar policy has been adopted by the Southern York County School District board.
Southern York already has a swell track record; last summer, it adopted an ILC-penned anti-LGBTQ policy. The district has previous banned books like Flamer. The district also reinstated a Native American mascot and canceled a noted Black chemist from some guest teaching spots in the school's science program because the chemist had previous made some statements about feeling excluded in the past due to her race. The district is about 90% white.
The new library policy, adopted unanimously by the board, further states that if a work includes vulgar language that offends good taste or propriety, that cancels out any intended serious literary, artistic, political, or value for the audience. In other words, the board will not allow the "artistic merit" defense for books with Naughty Language.
This goes beyond book ban laws that have prohibited depictions of sexual conduct or even divisive content rules. This rule says the board can yank anything that they find in any way improper or offends their particular taste. This rule doesn't much move the goalposts as it replaces them with a wispy cloud in a stiff breeze.
It's one more reminder that you can never, ever appease the culture warrior crowd, that they will never ever say, "Well, I think that's it. We are happy now that this line is drawn, and we will let you get back to business." They will never be happy until everything they disapprove of has been banished, and they will never, ever run out of things of which to disapprove.
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