Great Barrington — On Monday, November 25, attorneys for former W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School teacher Arantzazú Zuzene Galdós-Shapiro filed objections in United States District Court over motions to dismiss her civil rights lawsuit.
In a December 2023 incident that made national headlines, the Great Barrington Police Department investigated Galdós-Shapiro, who at the time was an eighth grade ELA teacher at W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School, in response to an anonymous complaint that she had a copy of the graphic novel “Gender Queer” in her classroom.
Galdós-Shapiro, who eventually left the school district and moved out of Berkshire County to Philadelphia, previously filed a civil rights lawsuit in the United States District Court against the town, Police Chief Paul Storti, Police Officer Joseph O’Brien, and Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon.
The lawsuit against Superintendent Dillon is separate from the lawsuit against the town, Chief Storti, and Officer O’Brien.
In August, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys filed an amended complaint with multiple new allegations against the defendants. In September, however, the attorney representing the town, police department, and school district made a motion in United States District Court to have the lawsuit dismissed. In October, Superintendent Dillon’s attorney also filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed.
In response, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys filed oppositions to the two separate motions to dismiss on Monday, November 25.
Galdós-Shapiro’s team of attorneys are Howard Cooper, Maria Davis, Benjamin Wish, and Shayne Lotito, all from the law firm of Todd & WELD LLP in Boston.
In the response to the motions to dismiss, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys argue:
The GB Defendants’ motion to dismiss is an attempt to silence a uniquely vulnerable individual, a queer Mexican-American woman married to a trans woman, who had the temerity to seek to assert her right to her own identity by maintaining her personal copy of an award-winning book, ‘Gender Queer’ in her classroom. Allowing the motion [to dismiss] would ratify the steps each of the defendants took to radically undermine Galdós-Shapiro’s constitutional rights and her security in simply existing as herself. Ms. Galdós-Shapiro respectfully submits that the Court should not do so and should therefore deny the Motion.
The GB Defendants, with the help of defendant [Dillon] blockaded Ms. Galdós-Shapiro in her classroom, interrogated her about the existence of an award-winning book, ‘Gender Queer’ and accused Ms. Galdós-Shapiro, on more than one occasion, of committing crimes for expressing who she is in a work environment. Officer O’Brien went so far as to block his body camera to communicate a clear message to Ms. Galdós-Shapiro: anything might happen now. Ms. Galdós-Shapiro was trapped, suffering the blowback of expressing her own views. The GB Defendants elect not to confront these allegations on their face and instead mislabel them as just as ‘investigation.’
The bodycam footage from the December 8, 2023, incident, as provided by the police department, shows Officer O’Brien blocking his bodycam with a piece of clothing while questioning both Galdós-Shapiro and now former W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School principal Miles Wheat.
The GB Defendants’ ‘investigation,’ should never have begun at all. Had any of them taken a moment to do an internet search of ‘Gender Queer’ they would immediately have learned that it is an acclaimed book which has won a number of awards, and could not be the basis for any criminal action.
Nevertheless, while the police report itself concedes that the GB Defendants never even looked at the full book or did anything to seek to understand what it was, they proceeded on the bare assumption that it amounted to pornography. That is not probable cause or reasonable suspicion; it is a guess that a confidential complainant’s assessment of a couple of pages of a book is right. The GB Defendants’ suggestion that they were actually investigating the spurious allegation that children sat on Ms. Galdós’s lap, and not just ‘Gender Queer’, finds no purchase. The Amended Complaint alleges that the GB Defendants’ actions were based on just one thing: ‘Gender Queer’.
Ms. Galdós-Shapiro placed ‘Gender Queer’ in her classroom to take a stand, to express her own identity and her own views on an issue of public concern; nothing in her role as a teacher or the narrow administrative responsibilities she had as the advisor to the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (‘GSA’) even suggested she had to or should do anything substantive on LGBTQ+ issues at all.
In the filing, the attorneys go on to, once again, accuse the town, Chief Storti, Officer O’Brien, and Superintendent Dillon, of violating Galdós-Shapiro’s First, Fourth, and 14th Amendment rights.
“The GB Defendants [the town, Chief Storti, and Officer O’Brien], and Dr. Dillion, knew there was no potential crime,” Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys write in the filing. “Including because ‘Gender Queer’ does not remotely fall within the definition of Obscenity under M.G.L. c 272, Section 29 (the ‘Obscenity Act’), and maintaining ‘Gender Queer’ in the classroom is far afield from any potential crime.”
Additionally, the attorneys for Galdós-Shapiro argue that both Chief Storti and Officer O’Brien should not be protected under qualified immunity under United States Code 1983 Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights.
Chief Storti and Officer O’Brien’s arguments for qualified immunity rely upon a shockingly incomplete recitation of the facts. They omit each of their failures to make any effort to understand what the book was actually about and whether there was any potential crime. They ignore allegations about the character of Ms. Galdós-Shapiro’s speech. And they say exactly nothing about Officer O’Brien’s actions in trapping Ms. Galdós-Shapiro in her classroom while he interrogated her. Their failure to address those allegations is a tacit concession; they cannot make out their argument for qualified immunity if they address the allegations of the Amended Complaint head on.
In a separate opposition filed with the United States District Court, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys make a similar argument against Superintendent Dillon’s motion to dismiss the case:
Dr. Dillon intentionally joined with the Great Barrington Police Department (‘GBPD’) Defendants to isolate Ms. Galdós-Shapiro in her classroom for the purpose of interrogating her about the existence of an award-winning book and, thereafter, to accuse Ms. Galdós-Shapiro of committing crimes. Indeed, Dr. Dillon went so far as to instruct law enforcement about when and how to undertake the search and even ensured that the principal, Miles Wheat (‘Principal Wheat’), could not step in to protect Ms. Galdós-Shapiro’s secured rights. Dr. Dillon did all of this with the knowledge that there was an established, available and agreed upon process, which he himself had approved and implemented, for raising any objection to a book which, to state the obvious, was not a criminal process.
Dr. Dillon also knew that as a queer Mexican American woman married to a trans woman, Ms. Galdós-Shapiro had placed the at-issue book, ‘Gender Queer’, in her classroom in order to express her own personal identity and her stance on issues that were (and remain) close to her heart. Indeed, he discussed the book with Defendant Officer Joseph O’Brien (‘Defendant O’Brien’) prior to the unlawful search and interrogation, and later sent an email to the school community explaining the importance and value of ‘Gender Queer’. Dr. Dillon knew precisely how traumatic it would be for Ms. Galdós-Shapiro to be subject to being physically trapped in her classroom and accused of crimes for expressing who she is in a work environment. Had he (or any of the other defendants) taken even a moment to consider the at-issue book, he would have immediately understood it was a critically acclaimed book of great value, not pornographic and could not rationally implicate criminal obscenity laws.
In an effort to sanitize his successful targeting of Ms. Galdós-Shapiro he argues, essentially, that this is a complicated, nuanced, thorny area of the law, and nothing exactly like this had happened before so the Court cannot hold Dr. Dillon to account. In making his arguments, Dr. Dillon improperly asks the Court to ignore the well-pled allegations of the Amended Complaint, reverses the burden on a motion to dismiss and turns on its head that if there is no case on all fours with this one exactly it is because the behavior of the Defendants here in general, and of Dr. Dillon in particular, is so outrageous.
Additionally, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys argue that Dillon should not be protected under qualified immunity because “It was clearly established that placing an award-winning book regarding gender identity was the speech of a citizen on a matter of public concern and not made pursuant to employment duties.”
As of press time, no additional dates have been scheduled in the case.
Click here for both United States District Court filings.
