First Amendment

Jacob Sullum | 11.21.2024 11:00 AM

On October 12, 2023, the seven-member board that overseas public schools in Escambia County, Alabama, met to consider renewing Superintendent Michele McClung's employment contract. The board had narrowly rejected a motion to renew McClung's contract at a meeting the previous August, and it did not look like the members in the majority, who had concerns about her performance, were inclined to change their minds. Steve Billy urged them to reconsider, effusively praising McClung and arguing that board members who voted against the new contract would be violating state law by forsaking their oaths of office.

That speech was pretty weird, especially because Billy was not just an ordinary citizen. He was (and is) Escambia County's district attorney, and he would later use the powers of that office to file patently frivolous criminal charges against two board members who voted against the new contract, along with a school board employee and a local newspaper reporter. Those charges and the ensuing arrests, Billy's targets argue in a federal lawsuit they filed on Wednesday, violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

"Americans must be able to participate in their government without fear that they'll be labeled as political enemies, investigated, and punished for exposing corruption," says Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain, who represents the plaintiffs. His clients "were just doing their jobs and what they knew was right," McClain adds. "But because that got in the way of what the district attorney and sheriff wanted, they ended up in jail. We need the courts to hold government officials accountable when they abuse their power."

Billy's office said he was in court on Thursday and unavailable for comment. But as he told it at the time, he also was just doing his job by intervening on McClung's behalf. "I would normally not get involved with things of this nature, as far as an employment situation," he told the school board. But he averred that "some board members" had launched "vicious personal attacks" against McClung, implying that "she was going to be indicted by a grand jury" as a result of a state audit.

Not so, Billy said: "I don't control much in Escambia County, Alabama, but I do control the grand jury of this county, and I can tell you this lady right here [McClung] is not going to be brought before a grand jury because there's nothing to bring before a grand jury." Then he added, "There are some other matters that will be brought before a grand jury that I'm not at liberty to discuss because by law that's a secret investigation."

What did Billy mean by that? He and Escambia County Sheriff Heath Jackson had already provided some clues.

At a local Republican Party meeting on September 18, 2023, according to the lawsuit, Jackson "said that he investigated the rumors about the audit and confirmed for himself that McClung had done nothing wrong." He "told the meeting that he would arrest McClung's detractors on a Friday so that they couldn't bail out until Monday and would have to 'eat his hotdogs all weekend.'" After that meeting, the complaint says, Jackson "confided in a community member that, if the vote for the superintendent did not 'go the way it should,' then 'the wrath would be coming down on some school board members.'"

I called Sheriff Jackson's office to ask about that meeting and the other allegations in the lawsuit. I left a message and will update this article if and when I hear back.

The day after the GOP meeting, Billy issued a subpoena to school board CFO Rochelle Richardson "and/or" Ashley Fore, the school district's payroll supervisor and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The subpoena sought "certified copies of any and all checks written to employees and labeled as 'COVID' payments or 'COVID BONUS' for the years 2020-23." According to the lawsuit, "the bonuses that the subpoena referenced were supplemental payments made with COVID-relief funds that the Board authorized under the prior administration. The payments went to seven Board employees........

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