The Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) and its agents have been accused of violating the First Amendment rights of two Texas fathers who were detained for allegedly disrupting board sessions.
One of the Texas fathers who was recently detained spoke to Fox News Digital on May 12, sharing his opinion that, for the most part, the trend is to remove and restrict the citizens’ civil rights with whom they disagree.
According to Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark’s suit, Fox News reports the school district, five board trustees, Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez, and members of the school district’s police force violated their First Amendment, 14th Amendment, and 42 USC 1983 rights.
WND reports Story and Clark maintained that the school board had broken the law by hiring Azaiez, raising taxes, and orchestrating their arrests, among other things. As a Round Rock ISD parent, Clark has four children in the district’s schools. Despite living in the district, Story’s seven children go to schools outside of it. According to the fathers, the defendants allegedly violated the fathers’ rights to petition for remedy and speak freely without fear of retaliation.
Aside from arbitrary detention or arrest without reasonable cause, the Texas fathers contended that the defendants breached their due process rights. Additionally, the men alleged that the trustees’ board failed to operate openly and violated the Texas Open Meetings Act by deliberating in secret and deciding that Azaiez should be hired in a later sham vote. Story and Clark requested a restraining order and court injunctions to stop the plaintiffs from implementing arbitrary spacing rules at board meetings using the Limited Public Comment and pretextual COVID-19 seating rule to limit criticism.
The agreement involving Round Rock ISD and Azaiez would be nullified due to the proposed restraining order. District spokesperson Jenny LaCoste-Caputo declined to comment because the district has not filed the lawsuit yet. Fox News Digital’s inquiries for comment from the other accused went unanswered.
According to the lawsuit, Story and Clark were arrested on September 17, 2021, for one misdemeanor count of impeding proceedings by disruptive conduct each. Plaintiffs made claims of “false and trumped-up” allegations, saying they expressed their legal right to attend board meetings.
In a meeting of boards on August 16, 2021, Story raised concerns about the district’s freshly hired Azaiez. As a result of allegations made by Azaiez’s ex-girlfriend, the Texas Education Agency recommended that the superintendent be provisionally suspended in January 2022. In March, he was reinstated by the school district.
A request for an order of protection against Azaiez had previously been submitted to the Travis County District Court, which forwarded it to Fox News. An unidentified woman who claimed to have been Azaiez’s partner from September 2018 until December 2020 and from February 2021 until June 2021 stated that when she informed him of her pregnancy, he insisted that she have an abortion and assaulted her in her house, putting the baby at risk of being miscarried.
Attorney Mary Nix, representing Azaiez, made the point in her opening statement that “all applications for protective orders … contain ‘allegations’ which are unproven and are not ‘facts.’ As I succinctly stated in a January 5, 2022 press release, we have objective evidence that the alleged assault, which is the genesis of this controversy, did not occur.”
In a news release dated January 5, 2022, Nix stated that the dispute was “amicably resolved, and there is a confidential settlement agreement. An agreed-upon civil restraining order was entered into by and between Dr. Azaiez and the complainant.”
When Story attempted to discuss something irrelevant to the meeting’s agenda on August 16, then-board president Amy Weir cut him off. Due to the “protective order” issued by Story through the school district, Azaiez was led out of the conference.
“There has never been an attempt to silence Mr. Story,” Weir earlier told Fox News. It was pointed out to Weir that, as is standard procedure, Story wrote on a card suggesting what he would speak about and even wrote that “unlike the board, citizens are not required to speak on items on the agenda,” which indicated that “he was planning to speak on a topic not listed for the meeting,” Fox reports.
“At no time were speakers not allowed to speak in accordance with state law and board policy at a Round Rock ISD board meeting,” LaCoste-Caputo stated.
