As written about in the Post Crescent and linked to earlier here, Appleton Area School District Board of Education candidate Amber McGinley has been banned from AASD property.
She has retained a lawyer, Brady R. Henderson of Cream City Law, LLC. Here is the full text of the letter that the Post Crescent published excerpts from and which he sent to AASD on Ms. McGinley’s behalf.
I write to you today on behalf of Amber McGinley and her family. Mrs. McGinley recently sought my assistance regarding the Appleton Area School District announcing that it has banned her from all the District’s public properties, including her child’s school.
As I have made an initial review of Mrs. McGinley’s case, I am disturbed by what appears to be a very aggressive and likely illegal use of an exceptionally blunt and burdensome tool.
In many years of dealing with civil liberties issues in schools, I have rarely seen so sweeping a ban made against a custodial parent, particularly without the presence of serious criminal or domestic allegations or findings. In my experience, these bans can be properly employed against some non-parents who have a history of illegal or dangerous activity on school grounds (such as some transients, drug dealers, gang members, etc.), or who raise specific safety concerns due to things like stalking or sex offenses.
With such common justifications noticeably absent, the District’s employment of such a ban against Mrs. McGinley raises serious legal and constitutional objections. I write in the hope that we can work together to rescind it without the need of litigation.
While Wisconsin law does allow a school district’s administration to exercise reasonable control of its public facilities and properties, that does not grant the Appleton Area School District authority to prevent the exercise of normal parental rights and functions and by so doing effectively bar Mrs. McGinley’s son from being able to attend school, bar Mrs. McGinley from attending meetings required by law to be open to the public, and bar her from exercising the rights and responsibilities of office should she be elected to the Appleton Area School District Board on April 6.
And yet the District has now done all of these things, and provided only the vague allegation that “there have been a series of incidents recently and over time establishing that disruptions are likely to occur if you come onto District premises,” to justify this sweeping ban. In reality, it appears these supposed “incidents” consist mainly if not exclusively of protected speech and verbal defense of her ten year-old son from being the victim of discrimination as a result of his disability.
Indeed what appears to be the catalyst for the ban, the events of February 18, are illustrative of this pattern. Mrs. McGinley and her husband were present in the office with their son questioning and objecting to the District staff’s unilateral decision to forcibly segregate her son from regular education students because of his autism and the associated behavioral manifestations. It should be noted that such forced segregation is of course completely illegal. The substantive issues surrounding his educational future and the District’s history of discriminatory conduct are outside of the scope of this letter, but I note them because the ban imposed by the District appears to represent an effort to retaliate against the McGinley family for complaining about disability discrimination and silence further efforts by Mrs. McGinley to advocate for change to District practices, including by seeking to serve in elected office.
In short, the District’s ban represents an unlawful punishment and prior restraint on Mrs. McGinley’s protected First Amendment speech in addition to the infringement on her rights as a parent and the associated rights of her son. As District staff are aware, the ban prevents her son from safely attending school because Mrs. McGinley can no longer drop him off or pick him up at the necessary time and place, work requirements prevent Mr. McGinley from doing so, and the District has failed to provide any alternative transportation options.
I would urge the District to reconsider its position. Even if the District could articulate some rationale for the ban in part, it is unlikely that it would apply so broadly as to justify the ban’s completely untailored scope, restraining everything from speaking at an evening public school board meeting to merely pulling into an AASD parking space to pick up her son on a normal school day.
Whatever its motivation, the AASD ban on Mrs. McGinley’s normal interactions and presence as a parent should not continue. We would ask that the ban be rescinded voluntarily, but my client is prepared to seek enforcement of her parental and constitutional rights through the courts if necessary. The District cannot continue to prevent Mrs. McGinley’s exercise of civic duty and her
responsibilities responsibilities as a parent.
If you believe that my client or I am mistaken as to any facts or circumstances pertinent to the ban, we are happy to discuss it further and/or to review any further information or evidence the District wishes to provide to support or explain the purported necessity of the untailored ban.
Please do not hesitate to call me with any questions or to discuss the matter further. I have also attached a Public Records request made on Mrs. McGinley’s behalf to which we appreciate your prompt attention.”
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