CV NEWS FEED // A recently filed lawsuit is alleging that the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, and a state homeland security office played roles in an alleged conspiracy against a mom from New Jersey after she posted to social media opposing her daughter’s elementary school teaching children sexualized content.
“This case, which began during the Biden administration, represents exactly the kind of ‘weaponization of government’ the Trump administration has vowed to correct,” Thomas More Society (TMS) Senior Counsel Christopher Ferrara said in a March 20 news release. TMS is representing the mother, Angela Reading, in the case.
TMS states that on March 12 they moved to add officials with TSA, DHS, and New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) as defendants in the lawsuit, which is filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey Camden Vicinage.
The filing alleges, “On information and belief, the TSA, DHS, and NJOHSP have worked and cooperated with the other Defendants to retaliate against Mrs. Reading for exercising her protected speech.”
In November 2022, Reading took her two daughters to a “Math Night” at their elementary school, where she saw posters — created by children at the direction of their teachers — relaying words such as “polysexual” and “pansexual.” According to court filings, Reading first spoke to one of the parents whose child made the poster and then spoke to a school board member. Her husband also met with the school superintendent. The lawsuit alleges that each party was dismissive of Reading’s concerns, so on November 22, 2022, Reading expressed her criticism of the posters in a Facebook group.
In the post, Reading explained that her 7-year-old daughter asked her at the Math Night what “polysexual” means.
“To say the least, I was livid,” Reading wrote in part. “Why are elementary schools promoting/allowing elementary KIDS to research topics of sexuality and create posters? This is not in the state elementary standards (law) nor in the BOE approved curriculum. It’s perverse and should be illegal to expose my kids to sexual content … Also, how can my young children be accepting of people ‘who are sexually attracted to multiple genders’? They don’t know what sex is!”
The post included several additional points further explaining her concerns and noted that they aren’t based on religion but on parental rights and children’s health and safety. According to the Thomas More Society, at the time, Reading was a member and vice president of the Northern Burlington County Regional School District Board of Education. She also noted her concerns were made as a private citizen, not as a board member.
TMS stated in the release that the retaliation Reading experienced after her Facebook post eventually made her resign from the board.
According to the filing, the day after Reading posted her criticism on Facebook Christopher Schilling, a major and an Operations Officer in the U.S. Army Reserve at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, sent an email criticizing Reading’s post — using his personal email — to school staff, the principal, and school parents. On Nov. 25, 2022, Schilling called for an ethics complaint to be filed against Reading due to the Facebook post, the filing alleges.
TMS alleges in the March 20 press release that officials at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst worked with North Hanover Township Chief of Police Robert Duff and the school superintendent, Helen Payne, “to coerce the post’s removal under Duff’s threat to the Facebook page administrator of liability for a ‘school shooting.’”
“This coerced censorship was accompanied by a retaliatory campaign against Mrs. Reading, including her referral to various law enforcement and security agencies and the depiction of her First Amendment-protected speech as a threat to the community,” TMS argues in the press release.
Further, Reading was eventually stripped of her “Trusted Traveler” status through TSA PreCheck and CLEAR, according to TMS. The filing states that CLEAR uses biometric technology to verify the identity of the traveler, enabling the person to use their boarding pass to bypass ID and TSA checkpoints.
The lawsuit alleges that on seven separate occasions between December 2023 and October 2024 when traveling via airport, Reading has been “subjected to repeated and unusual requests by TSA agents for additional identification and photographing on various occasions,” although her husband, who also has TSA Precheck and CLEAR status, has not. No one else in her group with CLEAR status was subjected to these to proceed through the security checkpoint.
In June 2024, Reading finally asked a CLEAR representative why she was being singled out for the additional identification. The representative said it was an issue that originated with TSA, not CLEAR, so Reading then spoke to a TSA agent.
The agent said there appeared to be a “flag on your record” but gave no further information, according to the lawsuit. Instances of flagging continued through October 2024.
“This development is likely an outgrowth of the baseless and retaliatory ‘investigation’ of Mrs. Reading by NJOHSP,” the lawsuit argues, “which Defendant Duff cited to coerce the removal of Mrs. Reading’s Facebook post by Facebook administrator Stouffer, in connection with which NJOHSP must have coordinated with the federal DHS, which, acting through its agency, the TSA, then ‘flagged’ Mrs. Reading for ‘enhanced’ security measures despite her TSA PreCheck and CLEAR status.”
The flagging has discouraged Reading from speaking out on social media and has made her fearful that she is under further surveillance by other agencies including the FBI, according to the lawsuit.
The feared surveillance might include “tracking or monitoring of not only her travels but her private communications by email, telephone or any social media content she might dare to publish in the future,” the suit adds. “This alarming state of affairs is consistent with growing evidence, including the revelations of FBI whistleblowers, that the Department of Justice, via the FBI, has been investigating parents opposing local school boards under ‘threat tags’ precisely for their strong but First Amendment-protected criticism of activist school boards.”
The infamous anti-Catholic FBI memo is a second example of increased surveillance of conservative-leaning critics of gender ideology, the suit notes. According to the suit, the memo depicted “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potentially including “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” due to their voiced opposition to, among other concerns, LGBT activism in schools, similar to the focus of Reading’s concern.
Reading is not Catholic, the suit notes, but “she has been depicted by these Defendants precisely as a dangerous ‘extremist’, and treated as such, because of her opposition to LGBTQ material being imposed on impressionable school children.”
In the March 20 release, TMS Senior Counsel Ferrara expressed optimism that now that President Donald Trump is in office, an appropriate solution for Reading’s case can be reached.
“We hope that with the change of administration, this case can be brought to an amicable resolution,” Ferrara said. “I can’t imagine the Trump administration wants to continue to defend this egregious example of government weaponization against concerned parents who oppose the woke agenda being imposed upon school children.”
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