Berg lives with his family on the Near West Side and sends his children to the Madison School District, which WILL sued in 2020 over its policy directing teachers to keep information about student gender-identity changes confidential — even from a student’s parents.
In fact, Berg was the lead attorney on the case, which ended after the plaintiffs left the district.
Do you have to be a conservative to work at WILL?
There’s not a litmus test when you’re hired, but given the kind of work we do I think it attracts certain people and doesn’t attract others and if you’re not aligned with our view on a lot of the things, you’re not going to want to work there.
What was it like to sue the school district your children attend?
It’s never been a problem. I think most teachers are there to teach and they want to teach math and writing and science and they love kids. We try to have conversations with teachers every year and just say, “Look, I know the district teaches a lot of this gender identity stuff. We don’t agree with all of it. We ask that you just let us know when you’re going to teach it so that we can review it and talk to our kids about it,” and most teachers have respected that. So we haven’t had a problem.
Have you taken your children out of gender-related instructional situations?
Yes sometimes, and that’s been fine. Part of it is we want our children to be able to navigate the world and it gives us an opportunity to talk through these issues and help them understand that there’s going to be some things that they hear that in our view are not true. In some ways it gives us an opportunity to teach them about discernment, about what’s true and what’s not.