A newly released Justice Department report says federal officials responded to political pressure over contentious school board meetings in 2021 with actions that threatened parents’ speech rights, highlighting the case of a Virginia father arrested after challenging school officials over his daughter’s sexual assault.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Monday that the Justice Department had released a wide-ranging review accusing the Biden administration of improperly using federal law enforcement resources in response to parents who confronted school officials over education, student safety and other controversial policies.
Blanche announced the release on X, while the Justice Department published the full report, which argues that pressure from the Biden White House and outside organizations contributed to a federal response that risked suppressing constitutionally protected parental speech.
Among the cases examined is that of Scott Smith, a Loudoun County, Virginia, father whose daughter was sexually assaulted at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021. Smith later became a prominent figure in the national debate over school board protests after he was arrested during a contentious Loudoun County School Board meeting.
The report traces the federal controversy to Sept. 29, 2021, when the National School Boards Association, or NSBA, sent President Joe Biden a letter seeking federal assistance in responding to threats and confrontations involving school officials. The association said some conduct directed at school boards could amount to “domestic terrorism” or hate crimes and asked federal authorities to consider available enforcement measures.
According to the Justice Department report, the NSBA letter went substantially beyond addressing genuine threats of violence and placed parents engaged in heated political disputes into a framework normally associated with domestic terrorism. The report says the association sought federal intervention that could result in parents being investigated, prosecuted or incarcerated.
Smith’s case was among the incidents cited during the broader dispute. His daughter, who was described in the report as disabled, was sexually assaulted in a girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021. The Justice Department report describes the attacker as a male student wearing female clothing and says the assault included forcible sodomy and sexual battery.
Questions about the assailant’s gender identity later became politically contentious. The Justice Department report characterizes the student as transgender, while the student’s mother later said otherwise. In a November 2021 interview, she said her son identified as male and wore a skirt but was not transgender, adding that he had wanted to have sex in the bathroom.
The assault occurred months before Loudoun County’s school board confrontation over transgender student policies reached national prominence. Superintendent Scott Ziegler had previously notified board members that a female student reported being sexually assaulted by a male student in a school restroom.
At a June 2021 school board meeting, however, Ziegler told the public that, to his knowledge, “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” He also said “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” a statement that prompted Smith, who knew his daughter had already reported an assault, to challenge the superintendent’s account.
Smith was subsequently arrested by Loudoun County sheriff’s deputies during the meeting and charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct.
The Justice Department report points to the episode as an example of how a parent involved in a highly charged dispute over his child’s safety became entangled in the wider political debate over threats against school boards.
“His [Smith’s] prosecution only ended after he received a gubernatorial pardon” from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2023, the report states.
Youngkin, a Republican, pardoned Smith after the case had become a major symbol of Virginia’s parental-rights movement and the political backlash against Loudoun County school officials. The controversy surrounding the assault and the school district’s handling of the case also became an issue during Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, in which Youngkin defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
“Scott Smith is a dedicated parent who’s faced unwarranted charges in his pursuit to protect his daughter. Scott’s commitment to his child despite the immense obstacles is emblematic of the parental empowerment movement that started in Virginia,” Youngkin said in a 2023 statement reported by Fox 5. “I am pleased to grant Scott Smith this pardon and help him and his family put this injustice behind them once and for all.”
The student accused of assaulting Smith’s daughter was found guilty in October 2021 of forcible sodomy and sexual battery. The case intensified scrutiny of Loudoun County Public Schools, particularly over what administrators knew about the assault and when that information was communicated to school board members and the public.
Five days after the NSBA’s Sept. 29 letter to Biden, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI and U.S. attorneys to coordinate with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement officials to address what the department described at the time as an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and other education workers.
The new Justice Department report portrays that memorandum as the culmination of political pressure rather than a narrowly tailored response to legitimate threats. It says the Biden-era department established a dedicated structure for assessing federal investigative and prosecutorial options involving incidents at school board meetings.
The report further says career Justice Department personnel initially expressed doubts about whether there was a sufficient federal law enforcement basis for Garland’s directive.
“The initial skepticism of Department of Justice personnel proved well founded. The Garland Memorandum, though nominally focused on threats of violence, attempted to interfere with parental rights and speech,” the report states. “It was the product of political pressure from outside groups and White House officials in the Biden Administration who pushed Department of Justice leadership to inappropriately weaponize the Department of Justice and to chill the constitutional rights of parents.”
The report argues that the distinction between actual threats of violence and constitutionally protected political advocacy was not adequately preserved as federal officials responded to the school board controversy.
The 2021 dispute unfolded during nationwide battles over COVID-19 policies, classroom instruction, critical race theory, transgender policies and parental authority in public schools. School board meetings in numerous communities became increasingly confrontational, with some officials reporting threats while parents and advocacy groups accused government institutions of attempting to categorize aggressive but lawful dissent as a public-safety threat.
The Justice Department’s newly released review concludes that, although law enforcement has a legitimate responsibility to investigate credible threats and violence, the federal government’s response crossed into politically sensitive territory by creating the possibility that protected parental advocacy could be treated as a federal enforcement matter.
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