YOUNGSTOWN — The Boardman and Liberty boards of education have joined a list of local governments and Native American communities in suing a Washington, D.C., consulting company, alleging it advised pharmaceutical companies on how to sell lots of addictive drugs that caused children to be born addicted.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Ohio, names McKinsey & Co. as a defendant and seeks class-action status. It is assigned to Judge Sara Lioi in Akron.

“McKinsey is a management consulting firm with operations across the globe” that “played a central role in the unfolding … exploitation of the opioid crisis by advising multiple manufacturers and other industry participants on how to sell as many opioids as conceivably possible,” the suit alleges.

The company has consultancy offices in more than 130 cities in 65 countries, the suit states.

“Knowing that its clients’ products were highly additive, ineffective and unsafe for the treatment of long-term, chronic pain, non-acute pain and non-cancer pain, McKinsey developed a singular focus on increasing opioid sales, no matter the resultant cost to society,” it states.

“McKinsey did this for well over a decade, despite knowing full well the risk to public health and safety,” it continues.

The suit alleges McKinsey used deceptive marketing strategies that McKinsey and its clients “invented, developed, deployed and continually refined for years.”

The suit alleges McKinsey is “liable for its misconduct and the harms it caused or exacerbated.”

A call to the company late Thursday was not returned.

The suit alleges that “as a result of McKinsey’s actions, the market was flooded with opioids. That increased the number of women giving birth to infants born with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome,” which is “a group of adverse neurodevelopmental conditions that occur when infants are born with opioid withdrawal symptoms.”

When such children enter schools, they “disproportionally need and receive mandated costly” special education services, the suit alleges. Such services can continue all the way through high school and costs almost double the cost per pupil for other students, the suit states.

Children living in families battling drug addiction also require special-education intervention, the suit alleges.

“The opioid epidemic has required many public school districts, including the (school districts) named in this complaint, to expend or divert already scarce resources to support children born with (neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome) or whose families that are struggling with opioid addiction and death,” the suit continues.

The 77-page lawsuit filed by attorney Marc Gertz and others of the Akron law firm Gertz & Rosen, seeks an “award of all economic, monetary, actual, consequential, compensatory and punitive damages available under the law.”