The Souderton Area School District has settled a two-year legal fight with parents and community members who say they were banned from school property and faced restrictions on demonstrations and meeting access after criticizing a board member’s lewd online comment. The settlement, announced Thursday, requires the district to livestream and archive its meetings and to set aside space for people to protest or demonstrate.
According to pennlive.com, the dispute traces back to August 2024, when school board member Bill Formica made a lewd comment on Facebook about then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The backlash that followed led Souderton Area for All and five individual plaintiffs — Patrick Kitt, Christopher Spigel, Helen Spigel, Maureen Kratz and Heather Young — to file suit against the district, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Ramsingh Legal, PLLC. The CourtListener docket shows the complaint was formally filed on November 20, 2024.
The lawsuit accused the district of retaliating against critics by restricting demonstrations, imposing a photo-ID requirement at meetings and banning certain people from district property altogether — conduct the ACLU of Pennsylvania complaint alleged deprived plaintiffs of their free speech and due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district had issued a property ban preventing Patrick Kitt, Christopher Spigel and a former student from entering district property for board meetings and other events, a ban the district later lifted.
A Settlement That Nearly Fell Apart Over an Apology
A tentative settlement was reached in early 2025, and it reportedly would have required the district to livestream and archive board meetings, create a demonstration area outside meetings and pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. The tentative deal also reportedly included an offer by plaintiffs to apologize to board member Kimberly Wheeler’s daughter…