A judge has dismissed two recall campaigns against Loudoun County School Board members Brenda Sheridan and Atoosa Reaser, claiming the parent group seeking to remove the members from office lacked sufficient evidence.

The conservative group Fight for Schools, led by veteran GOP strategist Ian Prior, filed the recall petitions last fall — the culmination of a months-long campaign to remove the local officials in the wealthy Virginia county, where debates over coronavirus closures, equity and anti-racism programs, transgender student protections, and a sexual assault have roiled the school board for more than a year.

The two recall campaigns against Reaser and Sheridan accused the officials of limiting the First Amendment rights of community members by implementing new procedures about who can speak during the public comment section of school board meetings — measures that went into place after some meetings devolved into chaos. Fight for Schools also took aim at the members’ participation in certain Facebook groups during the pandemic, and their mishandling of a sexual assault that happened in the county’s school system. Last summer, Loudoun school officials transferred a student accused of sexual assault to another high school in the system, where the student committed another sexual assault. (The student later was found responsible for the first assault and pleaded no contest to the second).

In a hearing Monday morning, Judge Thomas Padrick Jr. issued a ruling in Loudoun Circuit Court ultimately dismissing the recall campaigns against both members. (Padrick, a retired judge out of the Second Judicial Circuit Court, was appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court to oversee the case after all Loudoun judges recused themselves.) Padrick approved a motion submitted by Reaser to dismiss the petitions, after the commonwealth attorney assigned to the case, prosecutor Joseph D. Platania, agreed with Reaser’s motion. Padrick ruled that Platania would handle both the petition against Reaser and that against Sheridan, seeing as they were identical.

“I am so grateful that today an independent Commonwealth’s Attorney found that their petition lacks ‘any reasonable factual basis,'” Reaser wrote in a statement. “I will never be able to put into words the toll this process took on my family, and on the families I serve.”

While Fight for Schools lost on Monday, the group did successfully push one board member to resign last year. In October, board member Beth Barts stepped down after a judge ruled that a court case sparked by a recall campaign against her would go to trial.

Fight for Schools and Sheridan did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.

Previously:
Amid Recall Fight, One Loudoun County School Board Member Resigns
Parents File Recall Petition Against Loudoun County School Board Chair
Loudoun County Parents File Third Petition In Effort To Remove School Board Member