Souderton Area School District is trampling on free speech and violating the law in the process, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the law firm Ramsingh Legal, PLLC.
“The Souderton Area School District has engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to silence its critics,” said ACLU of Pennsylvania Deputy Legal Director Sara Rose.
This pattern includes the district extrajudicially banning individuals from school property, banning the all-Republican school board’s critics from holding a demonstration on school property while allowing their supporters to do so, and requiring photo ID to enter a recent meeting (something that has since been dropped, but that the plaintiffs want to ensure isn’t reinstated in the future).
Souderton’s school board raised the ire of local parents, staff, students, and community members in recent months after Republican board director William Formica made a comment on X (formerly Twitter) that Vice President Harris can count as one of her accomplishments that “she blew a lot of dudes.” Many in the community wanted Formica to resign, or even have other board members condemn the remarks – none of which happened. His long, often offensive social media history then resurfaced in the public eye causing more outrage and questions about his fitness to serve.
In response to this, Christopher Spigel along with his daughter Helen Spigel (a recent Souderton graduate) and another plaintiff Patrick Kitt spoke with board director Kim Wheeler, making comments criticizing Formica’s behavior, in the parking lot following the September 26 board meeting. As a result, and without any due process, the district labeled them security threats and banned them from school property and events.
“The District inflated that interaction into a safety risk. It certainly wasn’t a safety risk,” Joy Ramsingh told the Bucks County Beacon.
Spigel said the district’s actions impact him as a parent and are interfering with him raising his other child who is a freshman in Souderton.
“I just want to have all the rights other parents have,” he told the Bucks County Beacon.
Spigel went on to say that the issue shouldn’t be political, just fair – and legal. He just wants to “be able to say what I have to say and participate in my kid’s education.”
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Ramsingh said that this lawsuit is to get “the court to reaffirm that you just can’t bar a critic from school board meetings” because “there’s already case law on this.”
In addition to the banning of individuals, the lawsuit claims that Souderton Area School District prohibited members of the community group Souderton Area for All (SAFA) from holding demonstrations on school property, while they let the school board’s supporters “gather near the building entrance, pray, and sing religious songs at its August meeting.”
“There is a total disparate treatment between the two groups,” said Ramsingh.
SAFA Chair Stephanie Jamison said she just wants to hold the district to its motto that “Character Counts” as the behavior of Board Director Formica and now the district’s brazen attempts to quash any dissent is falling short.
“The school board’s efforts to silence its critics teaches students the wrong lesson about democracy,” added Jamison.
READ: SASD Complaint FINAL
