(The National Desk | Crisis in the Classroom)—A school choice activist sued a Kentucky school district’s board Wednesday for allegedly violating his right to free speech by blocking him from its Facebook page.
Corey DeAngelis, who has over 190,000 X followers and is the executive director of the Educational Freedom Institute, claimed in a lawsuit filed in a district court he is entitled to a declaratory judgement. The lawsuit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center, where DeAngelis is a board member.
The Pulaski County Board of Education breached the First Amendment when it blocked him and deleted his comments on some posts, DeAngelis claimed.
“Public officials at all levels of government need to respect the First Amendment—and public school administrators are no exception,” Dean McGee, a senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a press release.
The district blocked DeAngelis on Aug. 16, five days after he accused it of breaking Kentucky law by using the Facebook page to advocate against a school choice-related ballot question, according to the lawsuit. The ballot question, which failed in November, would have allowed families to use public education dollars to attend private schools.
He said he also “brought attention” to the district’s actions on X. The district removed the posts at issue on Aug. 14 after more than 90 predominantly negative comments had been posted, DeAngelis noted.
The district barred users from commenting on the post in which it announced the deletion of the allegedly illegal ones, according to the filing.
DeAngelis requested the district court order the school board pay monetary damages for how he feels it deprived him of the right to free speech. DeAngelis claimed he is also entitled to an injunction requiring the board to refrain from suppressing First Amendment rights.
“The district’s attempts to censor online criticism of its illegal actions were a blatant violation of Corey’s rights and the rights of Pulaski County residents,” McGee added. “We ask the court to ensure those violations are not repeated in the future.”
The school board’s chairperson did not immediately return a request for comment from Crisis in the Classroom (CITC).