Brief Filed Blasting the Attorney General for Targeting Parents as “Domestic Terrorists”

(Washington, D.C. – Apr. 7, 2023)  The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed its reply brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Washington, D.C.), in its lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The lawsuit challenges the Attorney General’s political attack against parents who speak out at school board meetings against the indoctrination of their children by “progressive” school boards.  The parents strongly object to the woke curricula and policies that these school boards are trying to implement as this “progressive” agenda is harmful to their children.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of parents from Loudoun County, Virginia and Saline, Michigan.

The lower court dismissed the lawsuit based on “standing,” thereby avoiding the merits of the federal constitutional and statutory claims advanced by the parents.

As stated in AFLC’s brief in reply to the brief filed by the Attorney General:

In his response brief, the Attorney General of the United States seeks to conceal his lawlessness by encouraging this Court to engage in its own form of lawlessness.  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (and the cases construing these rules) that apply to all litigants also apply to the Attorney General.  He is not above the law.  It is perhaps this hubris that led him to believe that he could get away with weaponizing the Department of Justice to do the bidding of his political allies (the “AG Policy” at issue here).  The question still remains, however, as to whether this Court has the courage to do something about it.  The district court showed none.  And the American people are growing tired of a judicial system that turns a blind eye to what is nothing short of government tyranny.  Take, for example, a simple and obvious point of this case.  Our Constitution grants the federal government limited and enumerated powers.  So how is it that the Attorney General is meddling in the affairs of local school boards on behalf of the federal government to begin with?  Where is his jurisdiction (i.e., authority) to do so?  To that end, the Attorney General wants this Court to believe the fiction that he is not labeling as “domestic terrorists” parents who speak out against the “progressive” agenda (his and the Biden administration’s favored political view) at local school board meetings.  So why are “threat tags” being created by the FBI, and why are the “FBI Criminal Investigation Division and Counterterrorism Division” (see AG’s Br. at 6 [emphasis added]) involved?  The Attorney General either believes that this Court is blind and stupid or that it will simply go along with his bidding (having been a former judge in this very Court and likely colleague to many).  Plaintiffs are hopefully confident that this Court will see through the Attorney General’s efforts to obfuscate the facts of this case and will have the courage to do something about it by permitting this case to proceed to the merits.  Our Constitution has failed if the courts are no longer the bulwarks for freedom but simply the enablers of government tyranny and abuse.

In the final analysis, it is important to highlight, yet again, that this case is at its pleading stage.  Discovery has not commenced.  Nonetheless, the Attorney General urges this Court, contrary to the law, to ignore Plaintiffs’ factual allegations, reject all reasonable inferences drawn from those factual allegations, and accept his “innocent” alternative explanations.  The Court must reject the Attorney General’s mendacity—the law, including our Constitution, requires it.