Ex-Wall Yearbook Adviser Wants Gag Rule Policy Voided: Attorney

WALL, NJ — The Wall Township high school teacher who is suing the school board and superintendent over the 2017 yearbook controversy has filed a court motion demanding she be allowed to speak to the media.

A motion filed Thursday, May 9, in Superior Court in Monmouth County seeks an immediate lifting of what attorney Christopher Eibeler called an "unconstitutional gag order" on Susan Parsons and a voiding of the Wall Township Board of Education media policy, which bars district employees and students from speaking to the media without prior approval of the superintendent.

The policy constitutes "prior restraint on her First Amendment rights to free speech," Eibeler, of Smith Eibeler LLC, said in a news release distributed Thursday evening.

Parsons filed a lawsuit against the Wall Township Board of Education and superintendent Cheryl Dyer on Monday. In it she alleges she was ordered to digitally edit a student's pro-Trump T-shirt in the 2016-17 yearbook over her objections, and then was made the scapegoat when the student and his family complained about the change. The ensuing controversy led to national news coverage and Parsons received death threats as a result, the lawsuit says.

"At the time of the incident I conducted a thorough investigation into the matter," Dyer said in an email Tuesday morning. "If and when there is a hearing on this matter, information regarding what took place will be made public and I'm confident that when the full facts come to light, all of the actions of this office and the Board of Education will be found to be wholly appropriate."

Wall Township Board of Education Media Policy 9400 reads, in part: "The Superintendent must approve in advance interviews between staff members or pupils and media representatives and authorize the release of photographs, video or digital images of district subjects, personnel, or pupils."

Part of the policy pertaining to photos is designed to protect children, specifically those with disabilities and those who have been placed in the district by the state Division of Children and Families.

Other districts have similar policies that detail permissible contact between staff members and the news media, to varying degrees, with the main thrust of the policies being that the superintendent be aware of the interview.

Eibeler said the motion seeks to have the Wall school board's media policy voided "as it applies to all staff members and pupils in the school district, as we believe their rights are also being violated and their speech chilled by this unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech."

He said his office has repeatedly contacted the school board but the gag order on Parsons remains in place, leaving her unable to respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

"We are disappointed that the district will not lift the media gag order on Susan Parsons," Eibeler said. "Susan Parsons has been subjected to death threats and other harassment as a result of not only being falsely blamed, but of not being able to defend herself through her own voice."

The lawsuit alleges Wall High School administration and an administrator's secretary repeatedly demanded edits of yearbook photos over the years, including Photoshopping clothing onto students at a beach event, digitally removing cell phones from students' hands in photos and other changes. Parsons's lawsuit says she opposed the changes which she often felt went too far.

As the yearbook controversy spread nationally in 2017, Parsons alleges she was harassed at work and at home, and her small swim business, Shore 2 Swim, was attacked.

"All of these issues could have been avoided if she had not been prohibited from exercising her constitutional right to free speech," Eibeler said.

Parsons was ordered not to speak to the media about the yearbook controversy when the news first was published on June 9, 2017, then was suspended by Dyer two days later. The lawsuit alleges Dyer then issued statements saying the administration had no knowledge of the decision to digitally remove the "Trump Make America Great Again" logo from the student’s photo.

"As the United States Supreme Court has made clear, '(t)he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury," Eibeler said.

The yearbook controversy was cited Tuesday night at a court-ordered special public hearing on a contract extension for Dyer that followed an 18-month court battle over the procedures the board followed in 2017 in approving a three-year contract extension.

Under an extension approved Tuesday, Dyer will be superintendent through the 2019-2020 school year. The alternative would have reverted to Dyer's old contract, which had an automatic rollover clause that would have extended her contract through the end of the 2024 school year.

Dyer will spend the next year leading a district where she not only is criticized by the public but where both the teachers' union and the administrators' union have taken no-confidence votes in her ability to lead.

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