A story out of Texas about two fathers who were arrested after exposing corruption, cheating and power abuse by their local school board is in the news again, as the two men file a federal lawsuit claiming the district and its agents violated their First Amendment rights.
The Christian Action Network covered the story and even interviewed both men, Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark, on the Shout Out Patriots podcast.
Story and Clark were arrested in September of 2021 for allegedly disrupting meetings of the Round Rock Independent School District board. Both men maintain that they were trying to shine some light on “a conspiracy among many of them to remove and restrain the civil rights of citizens whom they disagree with,” as Story put it to FOX News Digital on May 12.
“They ultimately have gone to great lengths to silence parents who disagree with them and ultimately to conceal their own malfeasance.”
In the lawsuit, Story and Clark charge the school district, five members of the board of trustees, Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez and members of the school district police force with violating their rights under the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment and 42 U.S. Code 1983. They say that the defendants violated their rights to petition the government for redress and their right to exercise free speech without retaliation.
They also say the school board acted illegally in hiring Azaiez, in approving a tax increase and in orchestrating their arrests.
Clark has four children in RRISD schools. Story is a father of seven who resides in the district but whose children attend school elsewhere.
In their suit, Story and Clark are demanding a temporary restraining order and court injunctions to block the defendants from imposing “arbitrary spacing rules at board meetings using the Limited Public Comment and pretextual COVID-19 seating rule to limit criticism.” The proposed order would also cancel the contract between RRISD and Azaiez.
School district spokeswoman Jenny LaCoste-Caputo said the suit had not yet been served and declined further comment. None of the other defendants responded to FOX News Digital.
