I do agree in part; but I believe there is more to that. If a single parent files a lawsuit claiming the pledge of allegiance is offensive, then the schools will stop that to keep from being sued. The teachers have no real authority; most fear being sued.
If a child comes home and says, my teacher says it is okay for me to be "non-binary"; any parent would sue to get money. It is my belief a lot of parents don't have the time to talk with their children about "who is saying what" in school. Social media is making a lot of these problems so much worse; but they can't be sued, and the government wont hold them accountable because the "super rich" are making too much money from them.
Actually anyone can be sued. Whether they win their complaint or not is a different story. In fact, quite often the suits are recorded seeking large settlements in the hopes of settling out of court. And then there are those where the courts, judges and juries, use for setting precedence rather than being reasonable.
When I was working I served on our product safety committee. I worked for an industrial packaging machinery company. Our purpose was to evaluate our machines' designs for personnel safety while maintaining functionality. Our attorney talked to us and told us that no matter how safe we make our equipment, we can never eliminate all liability and in fact, it was possible to make a machine so safe that the safety features can become considered a hazard in the eyes of our courts.
I'll give you an example. One of our machines applied shrinkwrap plastic on products. Ever see cases of bottled water and how they are wrapped in plastic which was heat shrinked around them? That's what our machine did. The plastic for that comes in a large roll, like paper towel rolls but much larger. When the plastic film breaks or an operator neglects to replace the roll before it runs out, it becomes necessary to rethread the plastic film through the machine. This involves holding the film against a pinch roller similar to the old wringer washing machines. The film is passed through one set of pinch rollers, across a short opening where a very sharp knife is on a rotary shaft, and then through a second set of pinch rollers.
Our task was to come up with a safe way to thread the film through that system of rollers. To do that we provided a small 12" x 12" piece of conveyor belting material that could be used to hold the film against the first set of pinch rollers and assist with feeding the film through the machine.
We had warning labels all over this area alerting people of the pinch points and sharp knife. The labels even showed a picture of a hand with severed fingers to try and depict reality. There was a guard door system installed with a dual actuated mechanical keyed door interlock switch along with a smart controller that monitored both switch contacts to verify that the door was closed to prevent access to this area while the machine was running.
The instructions were to fold the plastic film around the edge of that belting and jam it into the first set of pinch rollers. The operator would then have to close the access door, and walk over to the operator control panel, which was located far enough away that it couldn't be reached while accessing the pinch roller assembly. Once at the panel, he had to press a button to reset the machine and then select "Film Jog Mode." This disabled the knife so it wouldn't try to cut the belting and damage the knife and allowed manually operating the pinch rollers at a very slow speed to thread the film through the rollers and past the knife. After that, he would have to open the access door and remove the belting from the machine. The next step was to close the door, walk over to the control panel, and select "Manual Cycle Mode." In this mode, the knife is enabled and pressing the start button would cause the film drive assembly to run at a high rate of speed, cutting the film, and positioning it ready for starting the machine for production.
Well, guess what? I heard of one instance where the operators had figured out how to dummy out the door interlock switch so he could access the film roller assembly without losing machine power. Instead of using the belting to hold the film against the pinch roller, he got a partner that was not familiar with the machine to operate the push buttons while he held the film against the pinch roller with his hand. His partner, not being familiar with the machine functions, selected "Manual Cycle Mode" instead of "Jog Mode" so when he pressed the start button, instead of the film drive moving at a slow speed, it took off at high speed, pulling the operator's hand through the pinch roller and the knife fired severing the ends of his fingers off. Now his hand was stuck and he had to wait for maintenance to come and release the tension from the pinch rollers before they could get his hand out of there. He violate all the rules, bypassed all the safety features, and did this to himself and yet, we got sued and there was a settlement holding our company and his partially responsible.
I live in a rural farming community and you would be amazed at how many times I've seen some really stupid dangerous thing done.
One time I saw my neighbor pulling his baler down the gravel road with his kids who were quite young at the time (8-10 years old?) riding on the baler with their feet dangling in front of the pickup area. If he had hit a bump and they fell off, they'd have been run over in a heartbeat.
One other time as I was driving home from work I noticed out in a field a farmer combining soybeans with a cutting head. The cutting head was up in the air with the sickle running and he was sitting on the ground with his legs under the cutting head working on something by the wobble joint that operates the sickle. I knew it was still running becasue I could see the reel rotating In this case he is putting all his faith in a valve o-ring or a hydraulic hose. If either would fail, that head would fall onto his legs with the sickle running. Could have ripped him to shreds. But, you can bet that the manufacturer of the machine would be included as a defendant in a lawsuit.
