McKinney Dad Sues School District for Banning Him From His Kids’ Campuses

[Elderberry]

Texas Scorecard by  Erin Anderson July 7, 2023

Samuel Hall’s attorney Janelle Davis says they hope to give courage to other parents to stand up to abuses of power by school districts.

A McKinney dad who was banned from school property after publicly criticizing local school district officials is suing the district for keeping him away from his kids’ on-campus activities for an entire school year. The district did this by issuing a criminal trespass citation that was recently ruled invalid.

Samuel Hall, a father of two students in McKinney Independent School District, filed a lawsuit accusing district officials of acting in concert to deprive Hall of his constitutionally protected right to free speech and, in the process, preventing him from fully participating in the education of his children.

Hall says McKinney ISD issued the citation banning him from all school property in retaliation for his criticism of district policies.

In April of 2022, Hall spoke at a school board meeting, criticizing the board’s failure to remove sexually explicit books from students’ libraries.

When he returned to speak at McKinney ISD’s May 2022 school board meeting, Hall was intercepted in the parking lot by a McKinney police sergeant working as a school resource officer and the district’s head of security. The police sergeant and the McKinney ISD head of security are both defendants in the lawsuit, along with their supervisors: the school board president and the district superintendent.

More: https://texasscorecard.com/local/mckinney-dad-sues-school-district-for-banning-him-from-his-kids-campuses/

[PeteS in CA]

n April of 2022, Hall spoke at a school board meeting, criticizing the board’s failure to remove sexually explicit books from students’ libraries.

When he returned to speak at McKinney ISD’s May 2022 school board meeting, Hall was intercepted in the parking lot by a McKinney police sergeant working as a school resource officer and the district’s head of security. The police sergeant and the McKinney ISD head of security are both defendants in the lawsuit, along with their supervisors: the school board president and the district superintendent.

With a population of nearly 200K, McKinney is not an everybody-knows-everybody-and-their-business small town. Further, McKinney ISD has 20 elementary schools, five middle schools, three high schools, and four alternative schools (some probably for juvenile offenders and students getting off drugs), also not tiny. In other words, the district board took pictures and distributed them to district security to target Hall.

[mountaineer]

School district violates this man's First Amendment rights, in effect. Pathetic.