Breaking: Croton-Harmon school district picks law firm of Sokoloff Stern LLP to represent it in the Parents Defending Education lawsuit. [Update July 4: School district asks for extension to respond.]
The firm's founding partner, Steven Stern, also defended the school district in a 2019 lawsuit filed by a student who claimed she was bullied after being sexually assaulted.
Just 12 days short of a federal court deadline to provide an Answer to a Complaint filed on June 12 against the Croton-Harmon school district by Parents Defending Education, attorneys at the high-powered law firm of Sokoloff Stern LLP have informed U.S. district judge Cathy Seibel that they will be representing the school district, as well as a number of named defendants (including superintendent Stephen Walker and all members of the Board of Education.)
Today, July 3, two members of the law firm, founding partner Steven Stern and attorney Chelsea Weisbord, entered their formal appearances in the case on the court docket.
Stern, a so-called “SuperLawyer” who has represented hundreds of municipalities, school districts, and other public bodies and officials throughout New York state, was also the attorney on another prominent case against the school district. In 2019, Croton-Harmon student Jane Doe and her father, John Doe, sued the district claiming that school officials had failed to stop bullying of Jane after she was allegedly sexually assaulted at an off-campus party and spoke publicly about it. That case was settled out of court in 2021.
Chelsea Weisbord represents both public and private clients in state and federal court, and has handled a number of civil rights and employment discrimination cases, including issues around Covid-19 mandates.
A long list of the cases the law firm has been involved in can be consulted here. We will have more details about the firm and its practice in an upcoming post in the Chronicle. It is also possible, and even likely, that the firm will appoint additional attorneys to defend the district as the case proceeds.
In the meantime, the plaintiff organization Parents Defending Education, which claims to also be acting on behalf of three Croton-Harmon parents, has assembled a formidable legal team of its own.
The Chronicle will continue to closely report on the lawsuit, which may take a number of twists and turns over the coming months and perhaps even years. As we reported earlier, Parents Defending Education has already asked the court for a preliminary injunction against the district’s anti-harassment, anti-racist, anti-bullying, and DEI policies, which the court can now be expected to take up.
For our other recent coverage of the lawsuit, please see our commentary on the case, a Guest Editorial on the plaintiff’s chances of success by a Pace University law professor, and background on the federal judge assigned to the case.
Update July 4: In a letter filed with the court late Wednesday, attorney Steven Stern of Sokoloff Stern LLP has asked Judge Cathy Seibel to extend the deadline for responding to the lawsuit from July 15 to August 15. The district’s counsel has also asked for the same amount of time to respond to Parents Defending Education’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would bar enforcement of the district policies at issue in the lawsuit.
As part of his argument, Stern maintains that the plaintiff made their motion for a preliminary injunction before they had even served the district with the lawsuit, thus making the service of the motion “a nullity.” Stern writes: “Although frivolous and inherently offensive, plaintiffs raise complex legal issues,” adding that “There is no emergency here”—especially since Parents Defending Education has started clearly that it filed the motion for a preliminary injunction in order to quickly get some of the issues in the case up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
While it seems likely that Judge Seibel will grant the extension—something that judges do routinely, especially in the Southern District of New York where the case is pending—it also seems quite possible that at least some of the issues in the case will eventually wind up in front of an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court.
A foreshadowing of that possibility occurred earlier this week, when a federal judge in Kansas issued a preliminary injunction blocking “Biden administration rules deepening anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students and broadening the definition of sexual harassment at college and schools,” according to an Associated Press story on the decision. As one of several similar decisions by federal judges ruling on cases in a number of states, it could end up directly relevant to the lawsuit here in the Croton-Harmon school district.
We will have more analysis of the legal issues in the Croton-Harmon case soon, which could end up taking on national significance.
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Thank you for the resolution of the 2019 student lawsuit. Many of us simply did not know what had happened.
Was the amount of the 2019 case settlement not mentioned in the budget the following year?