A New Jersey mother who says she was treated like a terrorist for questioning offensive signs at a local school last November is now suing nine individuals who she says violated her civil rights.
Attorneys with the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit, public interest law firm, are representing Angela Reading. They filed a lawsuit on March 15, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Reading is a third-year law student, mother of two and respected member of her county’s regional board of education.
The 62-page lawsuit alleges that the police chief of North Hanover Township, acting in combination with military personnel from the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, coerced the removal of her Facebook post in which she objected to sexually explicit material posted in the hallway of a local elementary school. She spoke up because her children were exposed to the material.
The named defendants then portrayed her as a “security threat” and reported her to various law enforcement and security agencies in an effort to retaliate against her and make her afraid to speak out in the future.
During an interview with CBN News Monday, Reading said not only was there a mob of people trying to cancel her, “but I had a response from the United States military and our local police force that labeled me as a security threat, pretty much coerced my social media post to come down and then reported me to local, federal and stage agencies as essentially a terrorist.
“My entire life has been uprooted,” she said. “When all of this was taking place, I’m in law school and I had to stop going to school, not take my exams, which plummeted my GPA. I had to pull my kids from school during that time period for their safely. And now I don’t feel safe for them even going back to that school given how so many members of the community and the superintendent participated in this cancellation and betrayal of me as a security threat.
“So now I need to send my kids to a private school for their safety,” Reading told CBN News. “Not only that. I was forced to resign from the school board for the safety of my children and also that I had an ability to file litigation to protect my civil rights. So this has completely uprooted my professional career. I was supposed to be working for a law firm, representing school boards.
“So, there are damages far outreaching that will follow me throughout my entire life,” she added. “I don’t even feel comfortable and safe going out in my community the way that they portrayed me. I’ve lost friends that don’t talk to me who actually believed the things that were being said.”
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2022 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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