Fourteen states are launching lawsuits against the Biden administration for records related to the federal government’s alleged work with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) in order to target parents who were voicing their concerns at school-board meetings.
The Friday filing came after the federal government refused to provide a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all communications between the White House, Justice Department, and the National School Boards Association related to the matter.
“Attorney General Garland testified in Congress that his Memorandum was based on a now debunked and rescinded letter drafted by individuals in the Federal Government (EOP, ED, and DOJ) working with the National School Boards Association (‘NSBA’) dated September 29, 2021,” the lawsuit reads.
The state officials seek to review communications between federal officials and the NSBA to determine whether the administration had called for the surveillance of parents who protested left-wing policies at school board meetings and were labeled “domestic terrorists” for it.
“We just want the facts,” said Indiana Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita. “Rather than cooperate, the Biden administration has sought to conceal and downplay its culpability. What are they hiding? Why won’t they come clean?”
The lawsuit argues that in a memo last October, Attorney General Merrick Garland “parroted language” from a letter the NSBA sent to the Biden administration, warning about the level of backlash they’re getting from parents over critical race theory and other controversial teaching material.
The NSBA later issued an apology for the comparison of parents to domestic terrorists. But the states maintain that the Biden administration has never rescinded the memo.
“The Biden administration wants to sweep under the rug these inexcusable assaults on parents’ freedom of speech,” Rokita said. “But we’re fighting for full transparency and accountability for this misconduct so it doesn’t happen again.”
The complaint was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. It was filed by Indiana, which was joined by Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
In the NSBA’s infamous letter from last year, the organization called on Bien to “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” carried out by “angry mobs” of parents,” claiming that “educational leaders are under an immediate threat” from parents who oppose masks and Critical Race Theory.
NSBA urged Biden to issue an executive order that would serve to protect school officials and school-board members from parents by reviewing “appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute.”
The Left is increasingly seeking to involve Washington in local affairs as a way of stamping out grassroots opposition to its agenda. Democrats are primarily concentrated in the large cities and thus struggle to carry out their agenda in small towns and rural area, pushing them to try to impose their vision from the top via the federal government.
For example, Democrats have also sought to pass a bill that would launch an “unconditional war on racism” while creating a new federal agency known as the “Department of Reconciliation.”
“Declaring unconditional war on racism and invidious discrimination and providing for the establishment of a Cabinet-level Department of Reconciliation charged with eliminating racism and invidious discrimination,” reads a summary of the bill, House Res. 919.
This proposal appears to be in line with demands from “anti-racist” activist Ibram X. Kendi, who called for the creation of a Department of Anti-Racism (DOA).
“The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas,” Kendi said.
To prevent Washington from imposing a Marxist vision of political persecution on America’s parents, states and localities must hold the line to keep the federal government out of their affairs.
