Ex-School Director Aliota's case against Millcreek School District survives judge's ruling

Lou Aliota has scored another legal win against the Millcreek Township School District in their long-running and expensive fight over open records and the First Amendment.

The former Millcreek school director's federal lawsuit against the district has survived the first round of challenges.

The ruling lets Aliota pursue his claims that the district and the School Board violated his rights by unsuccessfully countersuing him for defamation in Erie County Common Pleas Court in 2017, after he had sued the district for access to public records.

Aliota has no plans to go away.

"Mr. Aliota is no shrinking violet," his lawyer said in a court motion that defended the filing of the federal suit.

Federal suit linked to tossed defamation case

The suit is an outgrowth of Aliota's biggest win so far: Erie County Judge Daniel Brabender's dismissal of the defamation case in January 2023.

Brabender found that the First Amendment bars a government entity from suing an individual for defamation over comments that person made about a government entity — in this case, the Millcreek School Board.

Brabender cited the landmark Supreme Court ruling in the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan, which established the standards for libel claims related to public officials.

With the dismissed lawsuit as his main evidence, Aliota sued the Millcreek School District and present and past members of the Millcreek School Board in U.S. District Court in Erie in June. He is seeking damages to recoup the more than $100,000 he has spent on his defense in the defamation case, according to court records and public statements.

The Millcreek School District, which has also spent more than $100,000 on the case, asked U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter to dismiss Aliota's suit. The district's lead lawyer on the case, Neal Delvin, argued that several of Aliota's claims were too old under the statute of limitations, and that other claims were "legally deficient," according to the district's dismissal request.

Aliota and his lawyer, Brian Pulito, of Meadville, contended that all of Alito's claims were timely and legitimate given Brabender's dismissal of the defamation counterclaims. Aliota asked Baxter to let all five counts in the lawsuit proceed.

One of five counts remains intact

In a ruling on Wednesday, Baxter dismissed four of the five counts as filed too late. They included a claim of First Amendment retaliation.

Baxter declined to dismiss one count. It claims the school district and the School Board violated Aliota's rights by malicious use of civil process in filing the defamation counterclaims. Baxter she said she would reconsider that count if the school district presented evidence and arguments that the School Board members are immune from being held liable.

The school district is arguing that the filing of the counterclaims did not violate Aliota's constitutional rights. Aliota is claiming the counterclaims were meant to retaliate against him for speaking out about the district and suing the district over the open-records requests.

"The resolution of this dispute involves an in-depth analysis of the fact issues that require further development," Baxter said in a 13-page decision. She said the school district and the Millcreek School Board members "have not met their burden of establishing entitlement to qualified immunity at this early stage."

The case can now proceed to the evidence-gathering stage known as discovery. The process, as Baxter said in her ruling, is meant to develop "further facts."

Aliota, school district have battled for years

Aliota, 77, a retired pharmacist, served on the Millcreek School Board during his one four-year term that started in December 2015. He lost reelection in 2019.

The case that led to the defamation counterclaims started years ago.

While a school director, Aliota sued the School Board and then Millcreek schools Superintendent William Hall in June 2017 to force them to release school district financial records. District officials said they had given Aliota all of the requested records, including invoices for solicitor's fees and other documents that he had requested under the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law.

In a report he gave to the School Board on Aliota and the records requests in 2016, a lawyer for the district, William Weichler, said Aliota holds himself out as a "grand inquisitor" searching for wrongdoing "when there is no evidence of corruption."

Using funding from the school district, the Millcreek School Board filed its defamation counterclaims in 2017. The board said Aliota defamed board members by claiming, among things, that board members "violated his basic rights and obstructed his duties as a school director," according to court records. The board said Aliota made the comments on talk radio and social media.

Aliota is claiming that his comments were protected speech under the First Amendment, and that the School Board's defamation case was an abuse that forced him "to defend himself, at great cost," according to his motion that defended the filing of the federal suit. That same motion said Aliota "is no shrinking violet."

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Judge says Aliota can pursue lawsuit against Millcreek School District