FFLC Defends Conservative School Board Members Against Liberal “Lawfare”
The Founding Freedoms Law Center (FFLC) continues to defend conservative school board members against a recurring theme of retaliatory punishments and targeted “lawfare” by liberals. Today, FFLC attorneys went to court on behalf of conservative Spotsylvania County School Board members Lisa Phelps and April Gillespie to defend them against baseless legal claims by their School Board colleague, Nicole Cole. After Cole’s attorney was unresponsive for over five months, blowing discovery deadlines and completely ignoring our attorneys’ every effort to contact them, the court granted FFLC’s motion to compel and ordered Cole’s attorney to pay our attorney fees. The judge, however, stopped short of dismissing the case, allowing it to continue for now, citing the particular public interest in the case.
Left to right: FFLC Litigation Counsel Michael Sylvester, Spotsylvania School Board Member Lisa Phelps, Spotsylvania School Board Member April Gillespie, FFLC Legal Counsel Josh Hetzler
This whole saga began last year with an alleged assault against Lisa Phelps by Nicole Cole during a closed meeting of the School Board. Phelps claims Cole tried to block her from coming back into the closed meeting room, intentionally pushing the door into her and then sticking out her foot to trip Phelps as she pushed her way through. The newly elected liberal majority called the closed meeting to formally censure Phelps – the former Chair – for speech she engaged in prior to the new liberal majority even taking office. April Gillespie saw the whole incident and was the only witness. Phelps filed a criminal complaint against Cole for assault and battery, but the judge dismissed the case, seemingly not wanting to get in the middle of a contentious incident involving elected officials.
Fast forward four months, and instead of apologizing to Phelps and moving on, Nicole Cole sued both Phelps and Gillespie for malicious prosecution, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, statutory business conspiracy, and common law civil conspiracy – all for simply telling their story about how Cole had assaulted Phelps. Cole also demanded they pay her $1 million.
When FFLC heard their story, we quickly recognized it for what it was: Another attempt by the radical left to use the courts to attack conservative school board members who are brave enough to speak up and fight back. So we decided to take up their cause.
Now the fight continues as we work on defeating each of these baseless charges against Phelps and Gillespie. Today’s victory was small, but important. We hope it sends a clear message that we and our clients are not backing down, we’re not going away, and we’re not going to stand by and allow this kind of “lawfare” against conservatives to go unchallenged.