Parents sue Cobb County school board over public comment changes
COBB COUNTY, Ga. - Parents in Cobb County are taking their battle over public comment access to the federal appeals court after district officials altered sign-up procedures during a tense board meeting, court filings claim.
What we know:
Two parents of Cobb County students filed an appellees' brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit following the denial of a motion to dismiss their civil rights lawsuit.
The lawsuit names the Cobb County School District, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, and several district officials as defendants.
The lawsuit stems from a Sept. 14, 2023, school board meeting where the district’s established policy allowed up to 15 speakers to address the board on a first-come, first-served basis via electronic tablets in the lobby 30 minutes before the meeting.
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Members of the Cobb Community Care Coalition wearing red "Replace Ragsdale" shirts arrived hours early and secured the first 15 positions in line.
Internal Microsoft Teams instant messages cited in the brief indicate district staff monitored the line, asking if those waiting were "all bad guys" and suggesting alterations to the process.
At the direction of Superintendent Ragsdale, administrators ordered staff to move the sign-up tablets outside the building away from the existing line just minutes before registration opened, causing a disruption that displaced Coalition members and allowed board supporters to claim speaking slots.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia previously denied the defendants' motion to dismiss, and the parents have requested oral argument before the Eleventh Circuit.
The backstory:
District officials moved to dismiss the claims by asserting qualified immunity, arguing that the parents failed to establish a First Amendment violation, causation, or a pattern of selective enforcement.
Attorneys for the parents argue that district officials intentionally manipulated the sign-up process based on the speaker's perspective, violating clearly established First Amendment protections against viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum.
The brief states that proof of a historical pattern of discrimination is unnecessary when direct evidence demonstrates viewpoint-based intent during a single event, adding that individual school officials actively coordinated and executed the relocation plan to foreseeably cause the parents' exclusion.
What we don't know:
The Eleventh Circuit has not yet indicated whether it will grant the parents' request for oral argument or when it will issue a decision on the interlocutory appeal.
It remains unclear how the appellate court will rule regarding the limits of its jurisdiction over municipal liability claims for the school district at this stage.
FOX 5 Atlanta has reached out to the Cobb County School District for comment.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from court filings submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit by attorneys representing the plaintiffs.