ACLU of Pa. files lawsuit against Souderton Area School District, alleging free speech and due process violations

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, along with Ramsingh Legal PLLC, are asking a federal court to stop Souderton Area School District from banning two parents and a former student from school property, among other demands.

The lawsuit claims the ban is “unconstitutional,” and is “retaliation” for the plaintiffs’ protest of school board member Bill Formica. The plaintiffs demanded Formica’s resignation after his lewd comment on X, formerly known as Twitter, about Vice President Kamala Harris went viral in August.

Sara Rose, deputy legal director of the ACLU Pennsylvania, and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said the district “has engaged in a pattern of activities designed to restrict people’s free speech rights.”

“There’s a lot of controversy around some comments that a school board member made, which resulted in calls for his resignation,” Rose said. “And since that, the school district has really been clamping down on speech at school board meetings, including not allowing people to demonstrate on school property, asking people to show photo identification to attend board meetings, and most egregiously, banning three people from school property for the remainder of the school year, simply for basically complaining to a school board member about the school district’s and school board’s conduct.”

The three plaintiffs were issued cease-and-desist letters by the district’s attorney in October, two weeks after they confronted a school board member and her daughter in the parking lot following the Sept. 26 school board meeting.

The district released a statement Wednesday saying that it supports and upholds free speech.

The district also said that it banned the two parents and former student because they “became aggressive and threatening with a School Board member and a minor after a board meeting” and thus “made the decision to restrict their in-person attendance at subsequent meetings.”

“It is not uncommon for school districts to take this kind of action when someone has exhibited threatening behavior,” the statement read. “The District will legally defend these decisions and will uphold the rights of all its residents to peacefully exhibit their free speech rights.”

Rose said they “completely deny that any of the actions by these plaintiffs was threatening or aggressive.”

“The school district has their version of what happened,” she said. “We, our plaintiffs, have another version of what happened, but even under the school district version, they engaged in protected speech.”

Rose said there were no criminal charges or police involvement, and the district’s decision to ban the plaintiffs is “a violation of their due process rights.”

“If the government’s going to take away your ability to attend meetings that you have a right to attend and that you have to attend in order to speak at, then they have to provide you with notice and opportunity to be heard,” she said. “They never provided these people with an opportunity to be heard.”

The lawsuit also asks the district to drop photo ID checks at board meetings, and to allow demonstrations on school grounds. It also alleges the district’s actions were unconstitutional when it required Souderton Area For All, a parent advocacy group, to hold their protest against Formica by the roadside ahead of the Aug. 30 school board meeting, while allowing another group supporting the board to form a prayer and song circle by the school’s entrance.

The district said in its Wednesday statement that it asked for meeting attendees to show IDs to ensure parents and residents had seating priority, following the crowded Aug. 30 meeting. It said it did not require identification to attend the meeting.

The district was sued in October over the ID issue and subsequently dropped the ID check.

Rose said the issue goes beyond the three plaintiffs’ case.

“When school districts do things like ban people from school property for expressing disagreement with things that the school board has done, it not only affects the people who are banned, but it really sends a chill to the community and inhibits other people from speaking out,” she said. “And that’s what we’re really concerned about here.”