Prince William School Board asks court to halt subpoenas

The Prince William County School Board is seeking court intervention to stop its former chair from continuing to subpoena members for documents in his defamation lawsuit against the former superintendent. 

In two scathing motions, attorneys for the board and former Superintendent Steven Walts asked a judge to stop the latest subpoena issued by former Board Chair Ryan Sawyers’ attorney and to sanction Sawyers and his counsel.

Sawyers, who served as chair from 2016 to 2018, is suing Walts over comments the then-superintendent made in a video posted on Twitter in May 2020. The video in question was posted after the school system received complaints regarding more than 20,000 private Twitter messages between Walts and students. 

In the video, Walts said he only used the account for official business, contended complaints against him were a political attack by his critics and said the complainants were bullying and attacking students online. 

Sawyers was not explicitly named, but Walts refers to “a former School Board member, who was previously censured by the School Board for his behavior.”

Sawyers has said the comments in the video, which had more than 29,000 views before being taken down, were “false and defamatory” and they “damaged Sawyers’ personal and professional reputation by alleging conduct that is reprehensible to him as a former school board chairman, businessperson, coach and father.”

Sawyers is seeking $2.3 million in damages. 

Sawyers seeking numerous records

Sawyers’ attorneys issued a subpoena to current Board Chair Babur Lateef on Aug. 19 seeking a slew of documents the school system has resisted releasing publicly. The subpoena had a deadline of Sept. 12.

Lateef and the school system were also served a subpoena in 2021 seeking documents specifically related to the May 2020 statement. The latest request seeks information stretching back more than five years.

Lateef was ordered to turn over:

• All communications from Walts since Jan. 1, 2017

• All communications he or any School Board member had with a firm the board hired to investigate Walts’ Twitter use; a law firm that investigated the account; and anything related to a meeting with any School Board member about the account

• Any report from the firm that investigated the account and any bills for their work

• Walts’ complete human resources file and any employment agreement for the superintendent

• All direct messages sent to the Twitter account or any correspondence containing those messages

• Any correspondence mentioning any alterations to the direct messages

• Any documents related to how the Twitter was handled, including an alleged May 2020 meeting with a female student

• All versions of the school system’s internet use policy

• Any performance improvement plan created for Walts after Jan. 1, 2020

• Any correspondence about log-in credentials for the Twitter account

The school system has rejected requests from InsideNoVa and the Prince William Board of County Supervisors to release all the messages with students, claiming they are part of the superintendent’s personal papers, an exception allowed under state law. The school system has said it will release messages requested by a parent between Walts and that parent’s student.

A judge sided with the schools in 2020 in keeping the messages private.

‘Abusive and harassing’

In a motion to toss the subpoena, Walts’ attorney said it is part of “ongoing abusive and harassing discovery tactics” with “no purpose but to embarrass and harass Dr. Walts.”

“Plaintiff’s attempt to obtain information from the School Board spanning years and Dr. Walts’ entire personnel record cannot be related to the events surrounding a social media post and actions over two days,” Walts’ attorney wrote.

An attorney for the School Board went further in an accompanying motion opposing the subpoena, saying the request is “in many respects redundant,” is “unduly burdensome” and is so broad that it “will impair the School Board’s ability to meet its primary obligation to provide educational services to the over 89,000 students attending the Prince William County Public Schools.”

“Further participation by the School Board and the PWCS in a lawsuit unrelated to its core mission is inappropriate and financially burdensome, especially considering that this is the third subpoena issued to the School Board in this case along and that the requests for information are wildly overbroad and irrelevant to the issues in this case,” the school system wrote.

The school system says responding to the subpoena would require the potential search from “over 11,000 different people.” It says since 2016, Sawyers and another resident, who has a nearly verbatim lawsuit pending against Walts, and their attorneys have filed “a multitude” of Freedom of Information Act requests and “has sued or otherwise embroiled the School Board” in legal filings.

The School Board claims that it has produced all documents not protected by attorney-client privilege or that are not beyond the scope of the lawsuit.

In April, a Prince William County Circuit Court judge overruled the latest attempt by Walts’ attorneys to have the case thrown out, while tossing out a subpoena against School Board member Justin Wilk.

Sawyers’ lawsuit has gone through several changes since it was first filed. The latest iteration claims Walts and former Deputy Superintendent Keith Imon, Associate Superintendent Matthew Guilfoyle and spokeswoman Diana Gulotta conspired to create the statement that Walts read in the video. 

Walts’ attorneys have hinged their defense on the claim that he is protected by sovereign immunity, which gives legal protections to public officials for conduct in the course of their employment. Previous attempts to characterize the statements as opinions have been overruled by the court.

Sawyers was elected at-large chair of the board in 2015 and has been feuding with Walts since he called on the superintendent to resign in the aftermath of an August 2017 car wreck. Walts denied any wrongdoing and refused to step aside. 

Walts’ attorneys have asked for the court to award attorneys fees and require any further subpoenas to receive prior approval from the court.

No further hearings have been scheduled in the case.