4 days ago
ACLU files federal lawsuit against Chambers County Board of Education
The Chambers County Courthouse as seen on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023 in Lafayette, Ala. ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the Chambers County Board of Education on behalf of two teachers who were wrongfully arrested in 2023.(Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama filed a federal lawsuit in May against the Chambers County Board of Education on behalf of two teachers who were wrongfully arrested in 2023.
According to the lawsuit, Yolanda Ratchford and Tytianna Smith held letter-size papers at a Chambers County Board of Education meeting picturing John Lewis reading 'Good Trouble.'
'Silently holding pieces of paper is not a crime. What happened to Ms. Ratchford and Ms. Smith is a clear and shocking abuse of power,' said Alison Mollman, legal director at the ACLU of Alabama. 'These women were exercising their most basic constitutional rights—freedom of speech and peaceful protest—and they were punished for it.'
According to a May press release, the complaint includes claims under the First and Fourth Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Alabama common law.
The litigation, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, is to get Ratchford and Smith compensated for the harm they endured while in police custody. She said Ratchford is wheelchair bound and was not given access to a toilet while in police custody. A judge ruled the two teachers were not guilty of disorderly conduct.
Messages seeking comment from Chambers County Board of Education and the Valley Police Department were left Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, the defendants have not responded to the lawsuit through the court.
According to a press release, the silent protest was part of ongoing community opposition to the school board's plan to consolidate the county's two public high schools into a new facility located in Valley, a predominantly white city, which would displace Black students and educators from LaFayette.
Mollman said the merging of the two schools would cause issues with commuting for Black students that live in spread out county and they would get a different education in the city.
'When you're going a few miles down county roads, it's much different than going down I 65 or 85 you know, at 80 miles an hour. And so that's part of the issue,' Mollman said in an interview in May.
The merging of the two schools, Mollman said, would put the Black students at a disadvantage because they would no longer be with their teachers.
'Many of those teachers were black, and so it's not just the bussing times. It's also where those students are going to be placed, who they're going to be taught by, and how that's going to be different, how they're going to be differently situated than from their white peers.'
'A judge determined that they were not guilty of those offenses, and made comments to the effect that if anyone was disorderly in the incident, it was law enforcement,' she said.
For the past 50 years, the Chambers County School District has been under a federal desegregation order. A federal judge ruled that both Valley and Lafayette high schools must be combined into one Chambers County High School. A new consolidated high school is set to be built this year, according to WTVM.
