Albany County Schools dismissed from anti-mask lawsuit

Grace Smith and the parents suing school districts and government officials across the state have now seen their case against all six of those school districts dismissed.

Albany County Schools have been dismissed from a lawsuit alleging that district leadership was in on a conspiracy to exaggerate the threat of COVID-19 and institute tighter government controls.

The lawsuit — which is rife with medical misinformation, conspiracy theories and typographical errors — was filed in November by Laramie teenager Grace Smith, her father and the parents of students in school districts across the state.

The lawsuit alleges that Gov. Gordon and state health officials are guilty of a plot to institute “authoritarian” and “communist” control over the state, and that mask mandates, testing requirements and even social distancing measures implemented by school districts are unconstitutional.

Albany County is the final school district to be released from the suit. All five other districts named by the suit had the claims against them dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Freudenthal in December. She called the lawsuit a “confused jumble” in the order to dismiss.

Albany County made nearly the same case for dismissal as the other school districts, arguing that:

• the lawsuit did not belong in federal court, and

• the lawsuit fails to cite its aim in a clear and concise manner, which would violate federal rules of civil procedure.

As with the other districts, Freudenthal ruled in favor of the parents on the first point — stating that the lawsuit could, in fact, be brought in federal court — but ruled in favor of Albany County Schools on the second point.

Freudenthal repeats her earlier order to dismiss, which says the complaint is “a confused jumble” of factual assertions, extensive citations and legal arguments about how all COVID-19 policies are unconstitutional.

“Plaintiffs repeat many legal arguments verbatim several times. For instance, Plaintiffs repeat the same argument regarding the meaning of ‘emergency’ in state statutes at least nine times,” the order states. “They then state fourteen claims for relief, with little or no attempt to tie any factual allegations to elements of legal claims.”

The complaints against the school districts were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs can bring their case again.

The plaintiffs — Grace Smith, the parents and their counsel Nick Beduhn — have until Jan. 28 to file an amended lawsuit addressing these reasons for dismissal. If they miss that deadline, the dismissals will become “with prejudice,” meaning the case cannot be brought again.

Parents’ motion fails to sway court, argues the wrong point

The plaintiffs filed a motion in December, asking the judge to reverse her dismissal of the first five school districts and asking her not to dismiss Albany County Schools.

The plaintiffs’ motion came after the five-district dismissal but before the Albany County dismissal. However, since all the school districts made similar arguments, the judge’s order dismissing Albany County Schools also serves as a response to the plaintiffs’ more general motion.

And the plaintiffs’ motion did little to convince the court.

Nearly 15 pages of the 22-page motion provide additional arguments for the lawsuit belonging in federal court. But the judge had already sided with the plaintiffs on this point.

In the earlier dismissal and later in Albany County’s dismissal, Freudenthal ruled the lawsuit did indeed belong in federal court — adding the defendants could be forgiven for not finding specific federal law claims in the 128-page unsearchable PDF.

The school districts won their dismissals instead by arguing that the lawsuit was not “simple, concise and direct.”

This was the main point on which the plaintiffs were supposed to respond. They spent less than a page on it however, arguing that the defendants’ opinions are “relative” and drawing a connection between their own lawsuit and the vaccine mandate lawsuit that Wyoming and other states are bringing against the Biden Administration.

“But Plaintiffs do not explain why they believe the states’ action shows that Plaintiffs’ amended complaint meets the requirements of Rule 8,” Judge Freudenthal writes in the dismissal order for Albany County Schools.

In general, the judge was not convinced by what the plaintiffs had to say. 

“For the same reasons stated in the order of Dec. 22, 2021, this is not persuasive,” she writes.

Godwin’s law and “experimental human subjects”

The plaintiffs’ motion failed to achieve its goal of overturning the dismissals, but it does shed further light on how the parents bringing this suit view the topic of mask mandates — or at least what rhetoric they are willing to use.

The motion begins by stating case law that references and defends the practice of “informed consent” — honestly and transparently informing potential recipients of medical care about the possible benefits and side effects of that medical care.

“The concept of ‘informed consent’ became ingrained into medical codes of ethics,” the motion states. “Petitioners assert and argue that informed consent is a fundamental right that has constitutional protection.”

The motion suggests that mask mandates are medical treatments to which individuals have not consented and are therefore a violation of ethics and law.

But the argument goes further, bringing in the concept of “emergency use authorization.” The plaintiffs argue that requiring students to use a medical intervention with an “emergency use authorization” classification makes them “experimental human subjects.”

“None of the Respondents have any authority to use any of the Petitioners as experimental human subject under any pretext,” the motion states.

To be clear, it is the COVID-19 vaccines that have emergency use authorization; not the mask mandates implemented by the school districts in question. No school district or college in Wyoming has mandated vaccines for its students.

And attaching the word “experimental” to the COVID-19 vaccine is simply inaccurate. The vaccine was rigorously tested before its authorization, continues to be rigorously tested and monitored, and has been given to more than 60 percent of all living humans.

The motion’s repeated reference to “experimental human subject(s)” also calls to mind historic horrors — such as the Tuskegee Experiment, in which hundreds of poor African Americans were denied treatment for syphilis.

The motion’s language also calls to mind the inhumane experiments carried out by Hitler’s Nazi Party during World War II. Indeed, the motion does not shy away from comparing the school districts’ actions to those of members of the Third Reich.

The school districts had made a third argument for dismissal loosely tied to the earlier argument that the lawsuit was incoherent. This third argument stated it is unclear which defendants are being sued by which plaintiffs. Some of the claims for relief can only be granted by some of the defendants, and, the school districts argued, it’s unclear why school districts should be included at all if the lawsuit’s main argument pertains to the actions of the governor.

It was in response to this argument that the plaintiffs’ motion referenced the Nuremberg defense.

“Respondents Nazi reasoning, that they were just following orders and therefore not accountable to the Petitioners, is without merit on it face,” the motion reads, grammatical errors included. “When one is playing God with people’s life and health, just following orders isn’t a sound basis to justify their part of injuries done to others.”

Since the plaintiffs failed to convince the judge on an earlier argument, this last point — and its rhetoric — were not addressed in the dismissal order for Albany County Schools.