By Adam Pagnucco.
America First Legal, a group headed by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, has filed a lawsuit against MCPS in federal court. The plaintiffs in the suit are Matthew Foldi, a 2022 GOP candidate for Congress in the sixth district and a reporter for the Spectator, and Bethany Mandel, a conservative columnist for a number of publications. Both Foldi and Mandel are Montgomery County residents.
The lawsuit makes two allegations. First, it cites a June 2023 meeting of the school board in which physical attendance was limited due to a very large anticipated crowd. Foldi and Mandel, along with many members of the public, were prevented from physically entering the hearing room and the suit alleges that violated their First Amendment rights as well as the Maryland Open Meetings Act. Second, the suit claims that Mandel was blocked from “an official MCPS X account” run by a group of six MCPS teachers.
Former Trump advisor and current America First Legal President Stephen Miller. From America First’s website.
The U.S. District Court of Maryland will have to determine whether MCPS’s crowd control efforts at its June school board meeting were First Amendment violations or reasonable accommodations for public safety. It will also have to determine whether the X (Twitter) account cited in the suit is indeed an official MCPS account.
What is clear is that the eyes of the national conservative movement are now on MCPS. The Spectator is a well-known conservative outlet and Miller, whose group is representing the plaintiffs, needs no introduction to our readers. I have previously written about national conservatives playing in Carroll County’s school board elections and described how an outside right wing effort to take over MCPS could play out. Miller, the Spectator and their allies have a lot of reach. Add it all up and next year’s MoCo school board races could get very interesting.
The group’s complaint can be found here. Its press release is reprinted below.
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America First Legal Sues Montgomery County Public School’s Board of Education for Violating the First Amendment Rights of Citizens by Denying Them Access to School Board Meetings
November 13, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Board of Education, and MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, on behalf of Matthew Foldi and Bethany Mandel for depriving them of rights secured to them by the the First Amendment and the Maryland Open Meetings Act (“OMA”) when the Board of Education denied them access to the June 27, 2023, Montgomery County Board of Education meeting.
Matthew Foldi is a resident and taxpayer of Montgomery County, Maryland, a reporter for The Spectator, and was a candidate in the 2022 Republican primary in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, which encompasses Montgomery County. Bethany Mandel is a resident and taxpayer of Montgomery County, Maryland, and a parent of school-aged children. Ms. Mandel is also a columnist for several national publications, including The Spectator, Fox News, Real Clear Politics, Newsweek, and the New York Post.
In October 2022, the School Board publicly announced the approval of over twenty-two LGBTQ-themed books for use in the classroom and initially offered parents an opt-out option before later retracting that offer.
On June 27, 2023, the school board hosted a meeting but only allowed invited attendees and pre selected speakers to physically attend the open session portion of the meeting and prohibited the public at large, including Mr. Foldi and Ms. Mandel, from attending the open session portion of the meeting.
The school board took this action to prevent what would be an overwhelming number of people opposed to MCPS’s opt-out policy from assembling and expressing themselves in the meeting room, to avoid media coverage, and to mitigate the negative political impact being broadcast throughout the community as a result of MCPS’s policy denying parents their opt-out rights.
Those actions violated Mr. Foldi’s and Ms. Mandel’s clearly established First Amendment rights as well as the Maryland Open Meetings Act.
Ms. Mandel also brings a separate claim against six MCPS teachers for blocking her from following and interacting with an official MCPS X account, in clear violation of the First Amendment and recent Fourth Circuit precedent.
Statement from Ian Prior, Senior Advisor for America First Legal:
“The rights of citizens to take part in the democratic process is paramount to the American system of government. Montgomery County School Board members, administrators, and staffers have decided that those rights are subsidiary to their ability to advocate for inappropriate instruction for children. That is because they know that active public participation will clearly demonstrate that the community does not support the radical agenda and actions that are being forced down the throats of parents. If Montgomery County Public Schools wants to ignore the will of their constituents, they cannot do so under the cloak of darkness and the evisceration of the Constitution and the Maryland Open Meetings Act,“ said Ian Prior.