Citizen journalist Shawn McBreairty didn’t live to see his legal victory against a Maine school district for threatening to sue him for criticizing its alleged suppression of female student protests against a gender identity restroom policy, committing suicide two days after receiving what his lawyer called a “bogus” legal threat letter from a party’s lawyer.
But by granting summary judgment to McBreairty’s widow, Patricia, on behalf of his estate, and denying it to Brewer School Department and Superintendent Gregg Palmer, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker’s ruling is heartening McBreairty’s friends and allies in the parental rights movement and First Amendment law community.
The district’s anti-hazing, bullying and workplace bullying policies, implementing state law, did not apply to McBreairty or “oblige, compel, or justify the conduct by the Brewer School Department and its legal counsel that gave rise to this civil action,” Walker wrote.
He also mocked defendants’ argument that the legal threat letter sent by its “retained counsel” did not constitute “municipal action,” which “makes no sense” unless they are “toying with the notion” that law firm Drummond Woodsum – whose website opens with a land acknowledgment to indigenous people –”acted at their own direction.”
Nothing gave the district or its counsel “license to threaten litigation whenever someone unaffiliated with the public schools speaks critically about a matter of public interest occurring in the schools and, in the process, identifies students or staff and criticizes them,” the blistering ruling by the President Trump nominee says.
“I’ve never cried over a win before … [sic] but I’ve never fought a case to ensure that my friend’s legacy was that of a winner,” lawyer Marc Randazza, a First Amendment legend with a colorful client list who has represented McBreairty in four cases involving school districts, wrote on X. “Shawn, I miss you bro.”
He prevailed for McBreairty in a 2022 lawsuit against Regional School Unit 22, which paid him $40,000 for banning McBreairty from school board meetings based on his criticism of sexualized books in the school library, particularly one that Breairty repeatedly said featured “hardcore anal sex.”
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied McBreairty standing last year, however, when he sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against RSU 22’s ban on “complaints or allegations” against school employees at school board meetings.
Randazza told Just the News Friday it’s been a “bittersweet couple of days” but he’s getting ready for trial on McBreairty’s claims that the Brewer district violated his civil rights under federal Section 1983 and the comparable provision under the Maine Constitution.
He’s seeking damages before the “politically diverse population” of Portland. “Sometimes it’s a lot more fun to have one of these things in front of a jury.”
The Center for American Liberty sponsored McBreairty’s lawsuit before its founder, Republican superlawyer Harmeet Dhillon, became assistant attorney general for civil rights in the second Trump administration. “His widow fought on and today she, Shawn, and we all won as the First Amendment prevailed,” Dhillon wrote on X.
Hellbound and Down 