DOJ school board threat memo: Supreme Court won’t hear appeal from parents

The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal from parents in Michigan and Virginia who accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of stifling their freedom of speech with a three-year-old memo that asked officials to look into threats directed at public school officials.

In 2021, Garland issued a memo addressing the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” levied at schools. The document sparked months of backlash and false claims that the Justice Department believed parents who were speaking up about school policies at board meetings were “domestic terrorists.”

The parents from Loudoun County, Virginia, and Saline, Michigan, framed the memo as a “rogue policy designed to intimidate and silence parent protestors at school board meetings.” It forced parents to choose “between forgoing protected activity” and “subjecting themselves to federal investigation,” the parents told the Supreme Court.

But lower courts waved off the litigation, noting that the memo did not include any new regulation and that it was geared at understanding threats of violence, not parents exercising their right to speak up at board meetings. The memo also does not label anyone a domestic terrorist.

The Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to toss the appeal, asserting that the parents “do not allege that the government has taken any action against them.”

The Supreme Court’s decision, made without comment, is the latest development in a campaign from some right-wing media and Republican politicians, complaining the Justice Department wanted to punish parents for attending or protesting at school board meetings.

The memo and litigation came at a time when many school board meetings across the country became heated over Covid-19 policies and curricula that some conservatives claimed are critical of White people.

CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.