Army Officer Used Joint Base Ties To Harass NJ Mom Over LGBTQ Poster Complaint: Lawsuit

JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, NJ — A Burlington County woman has filed a lawsuit accusing an Army Reserves officer at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst of stirring up public sentiment against her and her family over social media statements she made about a student poster that referenced LGBTQI topics in an elementary school.

Angela Reading of North Hanover Township claims Joint Base personnel, along with the North Hanover police chief and the North Hanover schools superintendent, violated her constitutional and civil rights “for no reason other than that they detested her constitutionally protected expression of her point of view on an issue of public concern,” according to the 62-page lawsuit filed March 15 in U.S. District Court in Trenton.

Requests for comment from the Joint Base, North Hanover Township and the North Hanover Township School District were not answered as of Tuesday morning.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, claims the defendants "abused the power of governmental offices to censor Mrs. Reading’s speech and retaliate against her with a campaign of smears, lies and referrals to assorted law enforcement agencies for investigation as a ‘threat,’ … to create a public fury specifically directed against Mrs. Reading."

The lawsuit also claims the situation caused Reading to have to postpone taking her law school exams and potentially has harmed her future career path, which she hoped would be working as a school board attorney, after years as an educator.

The Joint Base personnel named in the lawsuit are U.S. Army Maj. Christopher Schilling, a Reservist whom Reading accuses of leading a campaign against her; Joseph Vazquez, a civilian Air Force employee at the base; Air Force Col. Robert Grimmett; Air Force Lt. Col. Megan Hall; Air Force Maj. Nathaniel Lesher; Army Col. Mitchell Wisniewski, deputy commander at the base, and Col. Wes Adams, Joint Base commander. Also named were North Hanover Township, along with North Hanover Police Chief Robert Duff and North Hanover Schools Superintendent Helen Payne.

According to the lawsuit, Reading was attending Math Night at an elementary school in the North Hanover district shortly before Thanksgiving, and there were posters on the wall in the school hallway near the main entrance. One of the posters made reference to LGBTQ issues. Reading alleges her daughter asked her about the term “polysexual,” which was included on the poster.

Reading, a former teacher in the North Hanover district, was the vice president of the Northern Burlington Regional School District, which serves middle and high school students, at the time. After attending Math Night, she posted a statement on Facebook about the poster, expressing anger that it was in the school, calling it “perverse” that her children were being exposed to the topic.

In addition to publishing her comments in a private Facebook group for parents in the Northern Burlington Regional School District, Reading published them with a photo of the poster in a public Facebook group, NJ Fresh Faced Schools; the latter group was created during the pandemic and was a place where parents who wanted masks removed from schools all over the state posted regularly. Parents opposing New Jersey’s changes to the health and sex education standards also have posted regularly in the NJ Fresh Faced Schools group.

The North Hanover school in question, which was identified in the poster, serves fourth through sixth grades; Reading’s older daughter is a second-grader who attended a different school in the district. Half of its students are children of military personnel who are stationed at the Joint Base. Reading and her husband, who was the North Hanover school board president at the time, later withdrew their daughters from the district.

Reading alleges in the lawsuit that Schilling, who has children in the district, spearheaded complaints, encouraged other community members to complain or share information that highlighted similar statements by Reading, and urged the filing of a school board ethics complaint against Reading over her public statements.

Emails published as part of 55 pages of exhibits with the lawsuit show Schilling raised concerns with school district officials and with other Joint Base officials, including Hall and Lesher, that Reading’s posts might influence people with extreme views to potentially come to the area to intervene or cause trouble.

Schilling in particular expressed safety concerns after an unnamed person alerted him that Reading’s post about the poster had been turned into a story on a Substack site titled “Chaos and Control,” according to the emails.

The Chaos and Control post — the emails labeled it as a far-right extremist site — drew the attention of Joint Base personnel including Vazquez, who alerted the Department of Homeland Security. Reading claims in the lawsuit that it is an educational advocacy website and the response was overblown and, she said, spoke to the motives of those who reported her statement.

Eventually, Duff, the police chief, asked the administrator of the NJ Fresh Faced Schools group to remove Reading’s post in the group (it was removed), and Reading said he asked her to remove other posts she made, and she said she did so. Reading claimed Duff cited school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and in Colorado, as the reason for safety concerns, in part because schools in the district were easily identified in comments on the posts, along with school board meeting dates and times.

According to one email from Schilling to Duff included in the lawsuit, there were posts by people discussing breaking into another elementary school in the district — comments they alleged were inspired by Reading’s post.

Reading, in an email to Duff, accused him of censoring her speech — a claim she repeats in the lawsuit and seeks redress under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which “Prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion ... " Reading said in the lawsuit she objects to children being exposed to topics defined in the state education standards for sex and health education on religious grounds, though she did not raise religion in her Facebook post.

The controversy led to a petition calling for Reading to step down from the Northern Burlington board, accusing her of violating New Jersey’s school board ethics laws and the Northern Burlington school district’s social media policy.

Reading did step down later, following a contentious board meeting in December in which she says residents screamed and used profanity directed at her. That board meeting was held with metal detectors and a visible police presence, which Reading said was done to intimidate her.

“Mrs. Reading has received constant online harassment, and she now fears for the safety of herself and her family, especially after reporting to the police a truck sitting outside of her house for an extended period,” the lawsuit says. “Her standing in the community has also been harmed by Defendants’ concerted campaign, as government actors, to retaliate against her speech by depicting her as a ‘right wing extremist’ and a threat to public safety.”

Reading also accuses Payne, the North Hanover superintendent, of attacking her comments and portraying her as a danger to the community because Reading “had successfully sued Defendant Payne for pregnancy discrimination” and because Reading’s husband had refused to support Payne receiving a 5-year contract. Her husband resigned his seat as president of the North Hanover board as a result of the controversy, according to the lawsuit.

“The suppression of Mrs. Reading’s protected speech, the widespread and copious disinformation depicting her as a security threat — which all the Defendants have been responsible for disseminating — and the revelation of Defendants’ retaliatory triggering of military, police and security agency investigations of her, have devastated Mrs. Reading by radically disrupting her life and that of her family and causing her extreme emotional distress and anxiety,” the lawsuit claims.

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