The Manchester Township School District in New Jersey is facing three separate lawsuits alleging anti-LGBTQ+ bias after the school board fired the district’s gay superintendent and another administrator, while a third was forced to resign after confronting similar “open hostility and bias” from board members.

The school district serves about 2,900 students in Ocean County, just west of the Jersey Shore.

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The district’s former superintendent, John Berenato, was fired in November after he says board members buckled under “local political pressure” to prevent “those with different sexual orientations” from working in the school system.

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In a lawsuit filed in May, Berenato claimed board members expressed religious beliefs in opposition to homosexuality and openly discussed fears the gay superintendent was “pushing a gay agenda.” 

Berenato’s replacement, current superintendent Diane Pedroza, is alleged to have said she didn’t want the district’s curriculum to become “too gay” under Berenato’s leadership.

In a second lawsuit, filed in September, a straight colleague of Berenato’s said she was with the superintendent when he received “disgusting derogatory texts regarding sexual acts” from district board members.

Bridget Antonucci, the district’s former director of special services, said her allyship with Berenato led to her being labeled “a member of the rainbow community” and subsequently “subjected to a hostile work environment and ultimately terminated.”

The board’s conduct left Antonucci “shocked, wondering how elected officials could act so despicably,” she said in her suit.

Yet a third complaint against the district was lodged in October, following the resignation of out lesbian Lori Burns, the district’s former director of early childhood education.

Burns alleges that her sexual orientation was a “motivating factor” for “harsh, hostile and exclusionary treatment” by the school district and part of a campaign against LGBTQ+ administrators seen in both her and Berenato’s treatment at the hands of the board.

Burns cited an incident in October 2023, a month before Berenato was terminated, when transgender student policy was discussed at a board meeting that both out administrators attended. The complaint details “derogatory and homophobic” comments made at the meeting where transgender people were characterized as “dangerous” and “predatory.” 

Over the following months, the district “rendered her employment with the District so intolerable” that she was forced to resign in May, Burns’ complaint states.

All three former district employees accuse the board and named individuals of violating New Jersey’s anti-discrimination laws. Each seeks damages for emotional distress, lost wages, and punitive measures against the district and staff named in their suits.

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