Souderton Area School District Settles Free Speech Lawsuit Brought by Parents and Community Members Who Faced Retaliation for Criticizing School Board

PHILADELPHIA – The Souderton Area School District has agreed to create an area for individuals to hold demonstrations at school board meetings and to livestream and archive its meetings to settle a lawsuit filed two years ago by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the law firm Ramsingh Legal, PLLC on behalf of parents, community members, and a local advocacy group, Souderton Area for All (SAFA), over the district’s violation of their free speech and due process rights.

The district previously lifted a ban it unlawfully imposed against two parents, Patrick Kitt and Christopher Spigel, and a former student prohibiting them from entering district property to attend school board meetings and other events.

“Members of the public have a First Amendment right to attend and participate in school board meetings,” said Sara Rose, ACLU-PA deputy legal director. “School boards should take a lesson from this case: you can’t silence critics by banning them from meetings.”

The parties reached a tentative agreement in early 2025 to settle the case, which included an offer by plaintiffs to provide a confidential apology to Board Member Kimberly Wheeler’s daughter based on the district’s representations that she had been frightened by the demonstration if the district agreed to livestream and archive its school board meetings, create an area for individuals to demonstrate outside school board meetings, pay plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees, and issue a joint press release about the settlement.

In April 2025, the school board refused to approve the joint press release and instead asked the plaintiffs to agree not to discuss the settlement publicly. The plaintiffs refused—they brought the case to vindicate their free speech rights and believed that the community had a right to know about the actions taken by a public school board.

In response, the district’s attorney sent a letter to the court just eight days before the May 2025 primary election asking the judge to gag the plaintiffs from discussing the case and demanding that plaintiffs agree not to bring any criminal complaints against any school board member based on the events that gave rise to the lawsuit.

Following that letter, plaintiffs withdrew their offer to provide the apology.

“When the district tried to silence us—again-–I lost all trust that the school board was operating in good faith,” Kitt said. “It became clear that the board wanted the apology to weaponize it against us, and it had nothing to do with Wheeler’s daughter.”

The district then asked the judge to force the plaintiffs to abide by the settlement agreement even though it had been rejected by the school board. The court held that the district failed to prove that the parties had a binding settlement agreement because the school board never voted to approve it.

The judge nevertheless ordered the parties to adhere to the settlement, including ordering the plaintiffs to provide the apology to Wheeler’s daughter.

“It is the school board that owes the community an apology,” said Jane Spigel, president of Souderton Area for All. “The board misused district resources to retaliate against its critics and then delayed settlement of a lawsuit solely to demand an apology for the teenage daughter of a school board member for events that the district has repeatedly mischaracterized.”

Plaintiffs asked the judge to reconsider her decision regarding the apology because requiring them to do so against their will would violate their free speech rights. The judge agreed, recognizing that the First Amendment “limits the Court’s ability to compel an apology.”

You can learn more about the lawsuit at aclupa.org/souderton.

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