Three years after Nicole Solas asked her Rhode Island school district for its curriculum and teaching materials related to critical race theory and gender identity before sending her daughter to kindergarten, the stay-at-home mother compelled South Kingston to turn over those records for free — not the $74,000 it demanded — and pay her attorney’s fees and a civil fine.
Now she’s going after the school district and former board members for “working hand in glove” with state and local teachers unions to sue Solas under the theory that records she sought would reveal teachers’ private discussions, names and personally identifiable information.
Her attorneys in the federal First and Fourteenth Amendments lawsuit against South Kingston, School Committee members Sarah Markey and Emily Cummiskey include Republican super-lawyer Harmeet Dhillon’s firm, which recently refiled a lawsuit against California’s gender self-identification prison policies, and Rhode Island culture-war litigator Greg Piccirilli.
Funded by the Center for American Liberty, the suit alleges they “acted in concert … in the names of” the National Education Association’s Rhode Island and South Kingston affiliates to sue Solas in state court as retaliation for her “speech, political activities and related activism.”
