Filing claims against SCASD school board directors’ surety bonds - UPDATED
To get them to repeal the mask mandates on our kids.
I’ll be researching this over the next week or so and trying to find 10 other State College Area School District parents to join me in filing.
In the meantime, here’s some written information:
And here’s a video of parents in Dare County, North Carolina, who used the process to liberate more than 4,900 kids in their school district. The process is being used successfully in many school districts around the country.
As a side note, SCASD’s mask policy, as derived from the Acting Secretary of Health’s executive orders, has been “void from the beginning” since the PA Commonwealth Court ruled it unlawful in Corman v. Acting Secretary of Health on November 10, 2021, and the PA Supreme Court upheld the Commonwealth Court’s ruling, after Governor Wolf appealed it, in a decision published Dec. 10, 2021.
SCASD’s masking policy is illegal now and has been clearly illegal since at least Dec. 10, 2021, and from that court ruling, retroactively illegal back to August 2021.
Corman v. Acting Secretary of Pennsylvania Department of Health - Sept. 3, 2021 petition. Corman case parents argued that the Secretary of Health does not have “statutory or regulatory authority to mandate the wearing of face coverings by teachers, children, students, staff, or visitors working, attending, or visiting a School Entity.”
Argued in front of the Commonwealth Court [294 MD 2021, Oct. 20, 2021].
Mask mandate ruled “void from the beginning” on Nov. 10, 2021. Short summary of Commonwealth Court ruling by Sullivan-Simon.
Governor Wolf appealed the decision, to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court upheld the Commonwealth Court ruling on Dec. 10, 2021. 83 MAP 2021 case documents.
UPDATE (1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10)
There’s a new, related lawsuit filed on Feb. 8 against the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education and several individual school districts across the state, with very useful information.
Also I’ve already heard from three families interested in joining the campaign.
Thank you for spreading the word through your networks!
Please contact me at kgwatt@protonmail.com to get involved.
UPDATE (2 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10)
More info about the lawsuit filed two days ago:
The legal theory that districts have been operating under since December is the idea that the Secretary of Education has the power, separate from the Secretary of Health and Governor, separate from the legislature declaring the emergency over in June 2021 and stripping Gov of emergency powers, etc.
That’s what the Feb. 8, 2022 lawsuit (filed just two days ago) is challenging.
In the appendix at p. 45 of 62, the Secretary of Education tells the school districts by email to keep masking, but doesn’t cite any legal authority.
The petition at paragraphs 51-76 tries to imagine what the Secretary of Education might be claiming as legal authority, and asks the courts to find that Secretary of Education is wrong and doesn’t have that power.
UPDATE (2:15 p.m., Thursday Feb. 10)
I tried challenging the district on the legality of mask mandates by emails and information requests sent to State College Police Department and SCASD in July.
SCPD responded that a kid refusing to mask would fall under the control of school administrators for punishments, and that SCPD would only come if the kid refused to leave and was then charged with trespassing.
The SCASD response didn’t cite any legal authority, pointed me to the student conduct handbook for 2020-2021 without saying what section might apply to masking, and made it clear they were going to continue even without it.
I decided I couldn’t manage filing my own lawsuit to pursue it from there.
