The state of Missouri is asking a circuit court to intervene after the Missouri School Boards Association refused to hand over information about its role in the Biden administration’s “domestic terrorism” smear campaign against concerned parents.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the lawsuit on Tuesday after the MSBA repeatedly failed to fulfill records requests related to the National School Boards Association’s attempt to solicit federal intervention to silence parents who want to hold school boards accountable.
The lawsuit claims that despite receiving multiple emails from the AG’s office and the public, who were disturbed by the Biden administration’s eagerness to target parents, the MSBA, which is funded largely by tax dollars and staffed by public officials to serve the community, knowingly violated the Missouri Sunshine Law by ignoring or denying these requests.
“Upon information and belief, MSBA has hidden its full knowledge of, and support for, the effort by the Biden Administration and NSBA to investigate parents as ‘domestic terrorists,'” the lawsuit states.
Evidence shows the MSBA executive director did receive correspondence about the effort to shut up community members who disagreed with school boards’ radical leftist agendas but the “quasi-public governmental body” feigned innocence when petitioned by the public.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona first commissioned the leaders of the NSBA to write a letter demanding that the Biden administration use domestic terrorism laws to target parents concerned about the indoctrination of their children at schools in early October. The White House also colluded with NSBA President Viola Garcia and CEO Chip Slaven to craft the text of the letter before sending it out without approval from most state school boards associations.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then used this letter as leverage to direct the FBI and state attorneys to address “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.” Later, he admitted that the basis for potentially criminalizing parents who simply speak up at school board meetings came from the letter the Biden administration requested, not real evidence.
Shortly after the scandal surfaced, the Missouri School Boards Association joined dozens of other state groups in withdrawing its membership from the NSBA in late October after claiming the national organization “demonstrated it does not currently align with MSBA’s guiding principles of local governance” by partnering with the White House to target parents.
The Missouri AG’s lawsuit, however, exposes that the MSBA knew about the infamous “domestic terrorism” letter and even expressed public support for it via Twitter and the press. It wasn’t until the MSBA faced backlash from parents and was petitioned for information about the NSBA letter by Schmitt in early October that it backtracked its praise for the Biden administration.
“After MSBA received the Sunshine Law request from the Attorney General’s Office, but before its first response to the Attorney General’s Office, MSBA for the first time publicly distanced itself from NSBA,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also alleges that the MSBA concealed information about critical race theory in Missouri schools and details about its instructions for districts to oppose state laws banning mask mandates in schools.
As a result of MSBA’s stubborn lack of cooperation, Schmitt demanded that the court order that any relevant records be turned over to the public and asked that the MSBA be penalized for knowingly violating the law.
