"FIRE to Uvalde: Lift Ban on Father who Questioned School Safety or We'll Sue"

From a press release by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, whose descriptions and analyses of their cases I have generally found reliable:

Mere months after the Uvalde school district suspended its entire police force for failing to effectively respond to a deadly shooting at an elementary school, school officials banned a concerned parent from school property — because he questioned the qualifications of a new police hire.

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression demanded the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District lift its ban against Adam Martinez, a father of two students in the district. The district banned Martinez from all district property for two years, including from school board meetings. FIRE's letter to UCISD threatens litigation if the district does not lift the unconstitutional ban by May 22, 2023.

Adam Martinez (photo from FIRE)

 

… One of Martinez's children was at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, when a former student fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers and injured 17 others. His child was physically unharmed. In the wake of the tragedy and police's failure to enter the school building for over an hour, the school district fired its police chief and suspended its entire police force as it searched for qualified officers.

Martinez, concerned about his children's safety, is a vocal critic of the Uvalde school district's efforts to rebuild its police department. He started a local advocacy group that organized fundraisers for victims of the shooting, helped others with funeral and medical expenses, and does other community service. Martinez speaks out both online and directly with Uvalde administrators.

In February 2023, through correspondence with the Uvalde County Sheriff's Office, Martinez discovered that UCISD recently hired an officer whom the Sheriff's Office had deemed ineligible for rehire.

At the Feb. 13 school board meeting, Martinez approached UCISD Police Chief Josh Gutierrez, who was standing along the wall of the meeting room, to express concerns about the hire. Gutierrez didn't want to hear Martinez's criticism and told Martinez to sit down. Martinez, concerned about school safety and wanting answers, continued to speak to Gutierrez. Then, Gutierrez told Martinez and his family to leave the meeting, and informed Martinez that he would be banned from school property. As video of the school board meeting demonstrates, Martinez and Gutierrez's conversation remained quiet and did not disrupt the proceedings in any way.

The following day, UCISD Interim Superintendent Gary Patterson notified Martinez that, effective immediately, he was not allowed to set foot on any UCISD school property for two years. The letter cited Martinez's behavior at the school board meeting, falsely claiming it was "disrupting and/or disturbing." …

Martinez wants to attend school board meetings and graduation ceremonies for his nephew this month. But until UCISD lifts the ban, Martinez is barred from attendance….

I've e-mailed the school district to see if they wanted to pass along a statement conveying their side of the story; if I hear back from them with such a statement, I'll update the post to include it.

Comments

[rloquitur]

I have a better idea--let's prosecute these people for civil rights violations. Throw them in prison for decades.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and of course hold them personally libel.

[John F. Carr]

This is a recurring theme – somebody says something the government committee doesn't want to allow to be said and the system looks for a procedural rule to use.

Make the superintendent who issued the order pay for the man's children to go to private school until the no-trespass order is lifted.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Uvalde just can’t seem to stop stepping in it.

[Henry]

Uvalde has lost my vacation-time trade. I will be spending my time instead further north at I-10, where "the staff at Junction ISD may be armed and will use whatever force is necessary to protect our students and employees."

[ReaderY]

The school board claims the parent behaved disruptively during a board meeting. It remains to be seen whether this claim is true and, if so, whether the punishment for it was nonetheless pretextual.

There has been a spate of government bodies using very minor order offenses as pretexts to expel duly elected members. Courts have to be careful about encroaching on legislative powers and legislatures’ ability to conduct business by themselves. But that does not mean legislative leaders have power to do anything they want.

Government committees and bodies have some authority to ensure orderly proceedings and punish disruptions and offenses to order when they hold public hearings. This authority permits them to ban conduct within their chambers that would be fully protected if done at a protest rally outside. Courts must respect this authority. While this authority comes with a great deal of discretion, there are limits. Legislative leaders cannot use isolated, minor order violations as pretexts for draconian bans on entire points of view.

[rloquitur]

And what should happen when they use pretexts like this, prosecution and decades in prison.

[ReaderY]

One has to be careful to avoid remedies that are worse than the disease. Giving executive prosecutors the power to send legislative leaders to prison for decades if they slightly overreach might be just that. There’s a reason legislative immunity is a thing.

[rloquitur]

I don't think they are immune here--this isn't a core legislative function. We always have to remember the injustice we tolerate with immunity.

[Mr. Bumble]

I don't see how you can justify what is described in the OP. Barring an act of violence the board should have no authority to ban someone from attending or speaking in a public forum.

[ReaderY]

There’s a lot of gray between dissolving the ban on the parent and leaving things at that, and sending the members of the school board to jail for decades. And treating opposing sending the board to jail for decades over an incident like this as equivalent to opposing giving the parent any relief at all strikes me as a mother of a false dichotomy.

Managing proceedings in a legislative chamber is in general a legislative function. That’s why courts need to tread lightly and act carefully.

[Gandydancer]

It could be that FIRE is lying when it says that the video shows that no disruption took place, but why would you assume so?

If not, then the only disruption was to the school police chief's close attention to the proceedings, and examining the penalty of excluding the parent from a public forum (and the ability to engage in ordinary progress across district-owned grounds) is absolutely within the remit of the courts.

[tkamenick]

I generally agree with you that prison for decades is over the top.

But also, there's a lot of room between "you're disruptive, we're going to kick you out of this particular meeting so we can continue" and "you're banned from all school property for two years"

I think school districts and other governmental entities should have to get a court order to ban somebody from their property. The right to access public property should be presumptive and the burden should be on the governmental entity to get the equivalent of a restraining order to keep people out.

[Absaroka]

"It remains to be seen whether this claim is true"

If the video linked in the OP (titled 'Martinez approached UCISD Police Chief Josh Gutierrez') is video of the incident, Mr. Martinez' discussion with the chief was a lot less disruptive than the crying baby.

Moreover, if I was the newly hired chief, whose predecessor had gravely failed the parents of that school district, including Mr. Martinez, I would quietly take any kind of verbal abuse from those parents, with no reply other than an apology and sincere promise to do better. Governments, police departments, and companies are institutions, and the new HMFWIC inherits the institutional responsibility with the job. In the corporate world, if BigOilCorp replaces its CEO after a horrible spill, she doesn't get to say 'didn't happen on my watch, not my problem, talk to my predecessor'.

[Henry]

The black humor of the situation keeps reverberating in my mind: all the father has to do is take the chief into a room, lock the door, and shoot him, while being assured that not a single cop in town will do anything about it.