The ACLU is suing the Souderton school district after it banned critics of Bill Formica

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has sued the Souderton Area School District after three residents were barred from its property for the rest of the school year amid protests of board member Bill Formica.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia on behalf of the residents — as well as two others denied entry to school board meetings because they didn’t have photo IDs, and a group barred from protesting on district property — says they were banned “for making disparaging comments about Mr. Formica.” Formica has faced backlash for his social media posts, including one in July alleging that Vice President Kamala Harris “blew a lot of dudes.”

“The district’s actions are intended to chill criticism of the school board, and in particular Mr. Formica,” the lawsuit says.

The district, however, says that’s not the aim. It claims it banned the residents after they threatened a different school board member and her teenage daughter, confronting them in the parking lot following a Sept. 26 board meeting where critics continued to protest Formica. The district said the residents screamed at the girl, whom they mistakenly believed was Formica’s daughter.

“You screamed, ‘Tell your father he’s an asshole,’ and ‘Tell her dad he’s a fascist and needs to resign,’” the district’s solicitor, Jeffrey Sultanik, wrote in an Oct. 10 letter to Patrick Kitt, a district parent and plaintiff in the lawsuit.

He told Kitt and two other residents accused of yelling at board member Kim Wheeler and her daughter — district parent Christopher Spigel and his daughter, Helen Spigel, a 2023 Souderton graduate — that their “out-of-control behavior” had “created a perceived threat of harm,” and they were “not permitted to be present on any school property through the close of the 2024-25 school year.”

If Kitt or Christopher Spigel need to drop off or pick up their children from school, Sultanik said, they could drive onto school property, but would need to stay in their cars and call the main office.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU said Kitt and the Spigels were among a group of protesters outside the meeting, standing “several parking spaces away from the school board members’ cars to ensure they would not block them from exiting the grounds.” It said that Christopher Spigel had asked the teenager “if she was aware of her father’s controversial social media comments.”

The lawsuit says that Wheeler “confronted the protesters” before getting in her car and leaving.

In a phone interview Wednesday, the Spigels declined to comment on what was inaccurate about the district’s claims, deferring to their lawyers. (Sara Rose, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, referred to the lawsuit and said Kitt and the Spigels “did not engage in any threatening or disruptive behavior.”)

“We were out back protesting,” Christopher Spigel said. “We were not doing anything wrong.”

They hadn’t gotten any warning from the district before receiving the cease-and-desist letters. “It just seemed unreal,” said Spigel, who has a freshman in the district. “I can’t go into the school to see my kid?”

He said the action seemed overly punitive, “to prevent other people from speaking out.”

Controversy around the Souderton school board erupted this summer, after Formica — a Republican who was appointed to a vacant seat on the board in summer 2023 and then elected that November — made the post on X about Harris. (Formica had been replying to another user’s post asking people to “name ONE THING this chick has accomplished, politically?”)

Critics immediately began demanding Formica’s resignation, accusing him of sexism and misogyny — but also objecting to what they described as a pattern of offensive comments. Community members pointed to social media posts denigrating teachers and non-English speakers, and dismissing inclusion efforts (“my answer to diversity training would be ‘F off,’” one post read.)

But Formica defied calls to step down — saying in August that his post about Harris was “impulsive and juvenile,” but not intended to attack her race or gender. He attributed the criticism to “partisan politics.”

That meeting, held in the Indian Valley Middle School auditorium, drew hundreds of people. But the next month, the district moved the board meeting back to its typical location in the administrative office building, with a 110-person capacity. The district said it would check identification to prioritize residents for attendance.

The move spurred a lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Court from two residents, who said they were denied entry to September board meetings as a result of not having IDs. (Those residents, Maureen Kratz and Heather Young, are plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit, along with Helen Spigel, who said she was also denied entry.) The district stopped checking IDs in October.

The lawsuit claims the district violated Kitt and the Spigels’ First Amendment rights, depriving them of the right to attend school board meetings that are required to be open to the public. (Souderton, the lawsuit notes, does not live stream its meetings.)

It also violated their free speech rights by barring them for criticizing a public official — which is protected speech, according to the lawsuit. And it violated their due process rights by not providing them “with any opportunity to be heard regarding the district’s alleged basis for banning them from school property.”

The lawsuit also alleges the district violated the free speech rights of the residents barred from meetings because they didn’t have ID, and engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” by allowing supporters of Formica to demonstrate immediately outside of a board meeting, but forcing protesters to a public sidewalk farther away from the school.

Sultanik said Wednesday that the district was not enforcing the ID requirement — which he called a “seating preference requirement” — because it hasn’t needed to. Attendance hasn’t surpassed meeting capacity, he said.

He also said the district had the right to ban Kitt and the Spigels. Sultanik said he had previously issued such letters, giving an example of a parent who misbehaves at a football game, and that the district only needed a “reasonable basis” to do so.

“You don’t need to be engaged in a criminal act to be barred from school property,” he said, adding that Kitt and the Spigels were “never barred from providing evidence” that countered the district’s version of events.

Sultanik said the district had granted Kitt and the Spigels permission to participate in some events, including to vote. (Christopher Spigel said he wasn’t able to attend a board meeting last week about social studies curriculum, and was concerned he wouldn’t be able to attend his child’s holiday concert.)

The lawsuit wants the district to drop the bans, permanently end the ID requirement, and allow critics to demonstrate on school property before board meetings.

“We want to hold school board officials accountable when they engage in offensive behavior,” Stephanie Jamison, chair of Souderton Area for All, a group that has protested Formica and is one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “The school board’s efforts to silence its critics teaches students the wrong lesson about democracy.”