Why Edmond district wants state Supreme Court to hear its case against education board
In a filing with the Oklahoma Supreme Court, attorneys for Edmond Public Schools reiterated the district’s lawsuit against the Oklahoma State Board of Education centers around whether or not the board had statutory authority to set the rules for what books other materials should be in school libraries.
Meanwhile, in separate filings, attorneys for the board, the Oklahoma State Department of Education and state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters took aim at friend-of-the-court briefs filed in the case by two nonprofit groups, the Oklahoma State School Boards Association and the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration.
In its lawsuit filed Feb. 20, the Edmond district asked the state Supreme Court to assert original jurisdiction in the case — thus bypassing the district-court level — noting any court decision will affect all of the state’s 500-plus school districts. Last week’s brief was filed to support that argument. The court has set no date for a hearing in the case.
Walters has said his statewide election as superintendent is a primary reason why the state Board of Education has the right to decide what books should be on the shelves of libraries in school districts with locally elected school boards.
More: Edmond Public Schools asks state Supreme Court to rule on library issue with Ryan Walters
At the center of the argument is whether or not that assertion is true and the process by which any such rules can be created.
Edmond Superintendent Angela Grunewald said the lawsuit was filed after the state Education Department threatened to lower the district’s accreditation over a dispute about two books in the libraries of the district’s three high schools. The books in question are “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. Bryan Cleveland, the Education Department’s former general counsel, told the district the books had been reviewed by the agency’s Library Media Advisory Committee and deemed unfit for a school library.
A hearing before a state Supreme Court referee was canceled after the Education Department agreed to voluntarily stay enforcement proceedings against the district until the court rules in the case.
In an earlier brief, Walters’ attorneys argued the district hasn’t met the burden for the state Supreme Court to assume original jurisdiction. They argued the state board had acted legally and within its right to set the rules.
Attorneys for the Edmond district disagreed, saying the rules were improperly created. They noted in their response that because any decision would affect every school district in the state, “(t)his is exactly the type of consequential and far-reaching controversy over which the Court should assume original jurisdiction.”
The brief also called the agency’s Library Media Advisory Committee “an anonymous committee, neither created nor operated by” Administrative Procedures Act-compliant rules. The only publicly announced member of the committee is Chaya Raichik, the creator of the conservative social media account “Libs of TikTok.” Despite multiple open-records requests from multiple media outlets, the state Education Department has refused to provide the names of any other committee members.
Many attorneys, many legal briefs
With no intra-agency attorneys remaining on the state Education Department staff, Walters, the agency and the board have hired private attorneys to represent them — Paul Cason, Jason Reese and Emmalee Barresi, from the Goodwin/Lewis law firm in Oklahoma City. Barresi is the daughter-in-law of former state schools Superintendent Janet Barresi, who served in that statewide elected office from 2011-2015.
Cason, Reese and Emmalee Barresi wrote the briefs countering earlier briefs filed by the OSSBA and the CCOSA. They accuse the OSSBA of “fundamentally misconstruing the administrative rules process in Oklahoma” and said that “(i)n order to invalidate one set of administrative rules with which it disagrees OSSBA would have the Court overhaul the entire administrative apparatus of Oklahoma’s state government.”
In their arguments against the CCOSA brief, they say, “the question before this court is not one of obscenity or whether certain books contain ‘pornographic’ or ‘obscene’ materials, but rather, whether the Oklahoma State Board of Education has the authority under Oklahoma law, to enact rules governing the administration and operation of the public school systems within the state of Oklahoma. By law, there is no question that the OSBE has been granted that authority.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: With Supreme Court filings, Edmond district, education board dig in
