Federal Judge Dismisses Parents’ Lawsuit Against Attorney General for Memo Describing Them as ‘Threats’

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks in Washington, on April 1, 2022. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

A lawsuit filed by parents against Attorney General Merrick Garland for a memo he wrote, which characterized parents protesting against school district policies as a threat, has been dismissed by a federal judge.

In the memo (pdf) issued by Garland on Oct. 4, 2021, he stated that there had been a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The Department of Justice (DOJ) would use its authority and resources to discourage such threats, identify them, and prosecute people, it said.

The memo was written in response to a letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to the DOJ on Sept. 29, 2021, which described parental opposition to school policies like teaching critical race theory or imposing COVID-19 restrictions as being akin to “domestic terrorism” and warned that the country’s public schools and education leaders are under “immediate threat.”

On Oct. 19, 2021, Saline Parents, an association of parents in Saline, Michigan—along with six individual parents from either Saline, Michigan, or Loudon County, Virginia—filed a lawsuit against Merrick.

It claimed that the attorney general adopted an unlawful policy to use the resources of federal law enforcement to “silence parents and other private citizens” who object and oppose “policies of the ‘progressive’ Left” that are being implemented in public school districts.

The parents alleged that the attorney general’s policy labels them as “domestic terrorists” as well as criminalizes their speech. However, District Judge Dabney Friedrich, appointed by former President Donald Trump, dismissed the claims.

“The alleged AG Policy is not regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature because it does not impose any regulations, requirements, or enforcement actions on individuals,” the judge wrote in the Sept. 23 order (pdf).

“None of the documents that the plaintiffs allege establish the policy create an imminent threat of future legal actions against anyone, much less the plaintiffs,” she wrote.

Targeting Parents

In a House Judiciary Committee hearing in October 2021, Garland denied allegations that his agency would label protesting parents as domestic terrorists.

The Justice Department “supports and defends” the First Amendment rights of parents to complain “as vociferously as they wish” about their children’s education, he said. The attorney general also suggested that Republicans were mischaracterizing his memorandum.

In a letter to Garland in May 2022, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed that they received information from FBI whistleblowers that the agency was investigating parents (pdf).

“We have learned from brave whistleblowers that the FBI has opened investigations with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings,” the lawmakers wrote.

“The information we have received shows how, as a direct result of your directive, federal law enforcement is using counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity.”

This is contradictory to Garland’s testimony that the DOJ or its components were not using counterterrorism statutes or resources to target parents, the letter stated.