Father sues school district that called police on him while he was reviewing documents from public records request

A Maine father and parent rights activist filed a lawsuit against Hermon School District on Friday after district officials called the police on him while he was reviewing documents from a public records request, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

Shawn McBreairty sued the Hermon, Maine, school district for allegedly withholding documents from a Freedom of Access Act request. He claimed the district refused to completely hand over superintendent-training materials and communications related to the district’s Gay Sexuality Alliance club, a national LGBT+ group.

According to the lawsuit, Superintendent Micah Grant initially agreed to allow McBreairty to review the training materials in person. However, McBreairty claimed that Grant cut his time with the documents short and called the police when the father refused to leave.

McBreairty submitted three public-records requests, including one for superintendent-training materials provided by the law firm Drummond Woodsum, which the lawsuit alleged included a presentation titled “Avoiding Disaster In Court.”

He also requested information regarding a board member who owned a consulting group allegedly providing LGBT+ training to school districts.

McBreairty’s third public-records request sought communications between two district librarians regarding the school’s GSA club. The complaint claimed that the librarians created an LGBT+ display on the high-school campus that featured 40 transgender books.

Under Maine law, the district was required to allow McBreairty to first review the librarians’ communication for a timed period before requiring payment. However, the lawsuit stated that the district immediately required McBreairty to pay to view the exchange.

McBreairty was allowed to review the superintendent-training materials in person but was not provided a copy or allowed to take photographs because of copyright concerns.

Less than an hour into reviewing the documents, Grant called the police to escort McBreairty out of the school after he refused to leave, the lawsuit claimed. Once law enforcement arrived, McBreairty agreed to leave the premises, but he argued that Grant never gave him a time limit to view the documents.

“I went to the superintendent’s office, and we had a discussion about copyright,” McBreairty told the DCNF. “He said he would give me the binder, and at that point, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll just take the binder and write as much stuff down as I can.’ He sat four feet behind me, directly over my shoulder, watching me like I was on prison work detail. I guarantee you he doesn’t do that with other citizens who asked for anything from FOAA requests. He doesn’t want people to know what’s in there because there’s some juicy stuff in there.”

The school district filed a lawsuit against McBreairty in May 2022, alleging that he was “bullying and harassing” school employees by accusing a faculty advisor in the GSA club of “grooming children.”

“These public K-12 Maine schools and national schools, their number one goal is to talk to kids about Critical Race Theory, hyper sexualization, social emotional learning, which is all really leftist pedagogy of the day,” McBreairty stated. “Meanwhile, math, science, English scores have never been lower.”

Neither Hermon School District nor Grant responded to a request for comment, the DCNF reported.

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