Mesa Teacher Sues Over Online Attacks

When Tami Staas was first called a “groomer” and perverted on a popular far-right blog site, she decided it wasn’t worth giving the article any more attention than it already received. When another post leaked her name and home address, she still didn’t feel it was worth pushing back or giving the post more publicity. And when she received threatening packages in her mailbox, she again didn’t want to give recognition to the groups pushing the harassment. 

But when they threatened her job as a teacher—a role Staas has worked in for over a decade with elementary students—she decided it was enough. The difference, she told LOOKOUT, was that they came after her ability to make money.  

“I’m tired, for lack of a better word,” Staas said. “I need to not only set the record straight, but it’s caused a lot of mental anguish. It’s put me through a lot. And I need it to stop.”

Staas has been the focus of a campaign by owners and authors of far-right websites trying to—as they believe—expose “sexual indoctrination” of Arizona’s students. Indoctrination and grooming, they said, takes the form of first amendment protections such as reading books about queer people or expressing themselves publicly. 

The reason for Staas being the focus is because of her dual role as not only a teacher in the Mesa Unified School District, but also because she leads the Arizona Trans Youth Parent Organization, a local community group aimed at offering support and resources to parents of transgender children. 

In that role, she has been vocal during state legislative sessions advocating for trans students and pushing back against state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s policies limiting access to bathrooms, and enforcing a sports ban for transgender girls. 

Staas said she took on the role by accident when a majority of the parents who led the group before fled the state to protect their children from continued anti-trans legislation brought on by Republican lawmakers. And even though Staas has a trans child herself who has already fled the state, she said leaving Arizona is not an option. 

“My roots are here,” she said. “I have faith in Arizona. I’d like to see a change and I’m fighting the good fight.”

But that faith has been considerably challenged for the past two years. 

Some of the articles and posts written about Staas have been shared thousands of times online by accounts run by organizations labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups, including local Moms for Liberty chapters and Libs of TikTok. 

Now, Staas is suing people associated with those websites who are responsible for using misleading and false information in an alleged attempt to get her fired, including an incoming governing school board member for Mesa Public Schools, Sharon Benson, whose social media is littered with posts blaming LGBTQ+ people for poor academic outcomes across the country.

Named in the lawsuit are Benson, Peggy McClain, Chris Hamlet, and Tamra Farah as defendants. Their spouses are also listed in the claim but unnamed. 

Peggy McClain runs the website “Not In Our Schools,” a blog that targets LGBTQ+ teachers and any school policies affirming queer students. 

Benson is an at-large board member for Mesa Unified School District’s Governing Board after winning her race this past election, and has been supported by Chris Hamlet, a former candidate for the same board who lost his primary. 

Tamra Farah is one of the leaders with Arizona Women of Action, a small collective of conservatives that have endorsed candidates who attack LGBTQ+ students and make false claims about teachers giving out “sexually inappropriate content” in an attempt to stop lessons that may include any reference to LGBTQ+ people. 

Candidates across AZ are campaigning against LGBTQ+- affirming policies.

There are at least 58 candidates for school board, alone, who have been endorsed by anti-LGBTQ+ groups or other far-right leaders.

LOOKOUTZach Bradshaw

Farah also writes opinion stories for AZ Free News, a conservative news site that peddles conspiracy theories about “gender ideology” being taught in the state’s schools. The site is overseen by former and current members of conservative legislative policy groups. 

Stass' civil lawsuit in the Maricopa County Superior Court says McClain used “Not In our Schools” to spread misinformation about her teaching style and curriculum, including teaching pronouns. 

McClain’s blog has a modest following: a SimilarWeb report of the website shows that her posts only garner roughly 1,000 views a month. 

But her posts are often shared on the social media platform X with the website’s 3,000 followers that includes state Rep. Jacqueline Parker, former Maricopa County Attorney candidate Gina Godbehere, and current Congressman-elect Abe Hamadeh. 

In multiple posts, McClain accused Staas—who teachers third and fourth grade—of pedophilia for hanging a Pride flag in her room and teaching kids about pronouns, specifically the singular form of the pronoun “they.” 

The post referenced Staas and another teacher, saying “they are not shy about explaining how they influence their students in the classroom to accept their twisted view of sex.” The June 30 post referred to the teachers as “demonic” and Staas, specifically, as “perverted.” 

That post, according to Stass' lawsuit, influenced Benson, who was a former teacher with Mesa Public Schools, to comment online that she would have the expectation employees “teach state standards,” and echoed McClain’s statements that Staas was teaching sex and sexuality to her students. 

Multiple times, Benson has shared anti-LGBTQ+ content from “Not In Our Schools.” On her personal social media pages, Benson has also blamed the election loss of Kamala Harris on transgender staffers in the White House. 

In August, “Not in Our Schools” posted how a Mesa High School teacher had a “pledge” to “listen to students’ needs patiently and without judgment, to the best of my ability.” McClain’s post claimed the pledge and the rainbow sticker together was evidence of an “LGBTQ Agenda” and “sexual agenda.”

Benson also shared that post, which named Staas multiple times as the district’s “LGBTQ ringleader.” Benson commented that “activists are stealing the future away from innocent children, and causing confusion.”

In response, the Mesa Unified School District conducted an investigation and found no wrongdoing. Stass' lawsuit said Benson and McClain were given that report, but continued to post about Staas in an attempt to harm her employment. 

Benson used to be an employee of Mesa Unified before she retired last year. In her position as a teacher, she was also a mandated reporter—someone who is legally required to contact legal authorities if they believe a child is being sexually assaulted or groomed. Before Staas filed her lawsuit, Benson showed up to a Mesa Unified School District board meeting in September and spoke in opposition to being inclusive of LGBTQ+ students and said that it was “inappropriate.”

But a review of public-facing investigations from the Arizona Department of Child Safety show Staas has not been investigated for any illegal activity, and there have been no known complaints filed by Benson, despite her legal duty to report inappropriate behavior. 

“That is because Ms. Benson knew there was no validity to any of her accusations,” Stass' lawyers said in the lawsuit. 

After winning her election and being served the lawsuit, Benson wrote a post that threatened writing up teachers for “insubordination” and how “truth and virtue will win out if we are vigilant and courageous!” 

It’s unclear how the defamation lawsuit, if Staas wins, will affect the practices of websites such as AZ Free News, which claims on its website to be the “#1 Source for Arizona News & Politics.”

“Not In Our Schools” makes no claim to be a news website, but is often quoted as source material for AZ Free News, and McClain has written opinion pieces for the website before. 

Parents of trans youth say bullying starts at the top

Often left out of the conversation, they say politicians and other parents are to blame for harassment.

LOOKOUTGeri Koeppel (she/her)

AZ Free News is published by the Arizona Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit based out of Gilbert that makes claims on advancing independent and investigative news in Arizona. Though neither AZ Free News nor the foundation are affiliated, registered or certified by any news affiliates—such as the Institute for Nonprofit News, Arizona Media Association, or LION Publishers—that establish standards for the industry. 

Its executive director and managing editor, Eric Porteus, was the former director of digital marketing for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that opposes LGBTQ+ rights and has been labeled as a Christian-based hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. AZ Free News’s board also includes members of conservative policy groups including the Goldwater Institute. 

One post from Libs of TikTok—an online social media account with a sizable following that inspired bomb threats to libraries and children's hospitals—reposted an opinion piece from AZ Free News written by Tamra Farah that shared Stass' personal information that resulted in Staas receiving threatening messages, according to the lawsuit. Farah has written multiple op-ed pieces for AZ Free News that make false claims about LGBTQ+ people in public schools and is against them celebrating community holidays such as Trans Day of Remembrance. 

Stass' lawsuit—which Brick Road Coffee in Tempe is helping to fundraise for and offset costs— would be one of a recent wave of cases filed against far-right news websites that have been forced to remove articles, publicly apologize, or pay out damages to people and companies who have been on the receiving end of misleading and false news articles posted about the 2020 election being “stolen” from then-President Donald Trump. 

Organizers in AZ brace for impacts of a far-right government

The considerable shift to the right locally showed many that the work to attain civil rights is far from over.

LOOKOUTCelina Jiménez (she/her)

Since Stass' lawsuit, AZ Free News has added a clarification to the top of Farah’s opinion piece from August this year that says the language to describe “grooming” or “sexualizing” children is not meant to be taken literally: “The reference to sexually grooming kids concerns encouraging LGBTQIA gender identity considerations. Further, the mention of sexualizing kids refers specifically to encouraging kids to access the specific library books indicated and not to anything else.”

Benson, McClain, and Farah would not respond to LOOKOUT’s request for comment.