Great Barrington — It has been over one year since the Great Barrington Police Department investigated Arantzazú Zuzene Galdós-Shapiro, the now former eighth grade ELA teacher at W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School, in response to a complaint that she had a copy of the graphic novel “Gender Queer” in her classroom.
The incident made national headlines and rattled both the Berkshire Hills Regional School District community and Berkshire County.
Following public backlash for the incident, Police Chief Paul Storti released an apology in late December 2023 for the investigation and the way it was handled.
In February 2024, the Berkshire Hills Regional School District issued an independent report on the incident that revealed that the complainant who went to the police was Great Barrington resident Adam Yorke, who worked as a night custodian in the school district and also made multiple allegations against Galdós-Shapiro that were eventually proven false.
In April, a Selectboard-commissioned report on the police investigation found that the department’s actions were “lawful and proper.”
A few weeks later on May 14, Galdós-Shapiro, who now lives in Philadelphia, filed a civil rights lawsuit in the United States District Court against the town of Great Barrington, Berkshire Hills Regional School District, Superintendent of Schools Peter Dillon, Police Chief Storti, and investigating Officer Joseph O’Brien.
In August, Galdós-Shapiro’s team of attorneys from Boston’s Todd & Weld LLP, filed an amended complaint with multiple new allegations against the defendants.
In the ensuing months, attorneys representing all sides of the case have gone back and forth in multiple court filings.
In September the attorney representing the town, police department, and school district made a motion in United States District Court to have the lawsuit dismissed, while Superintendent Dillon’s attorney also filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed in October.
In late November, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys filed oppositions to the two separate motions to dismiss.
In response, attorneys representing the town, Police Chief Storti, and Officer O’Brien, along with the attorney representing Superintendent Dillon, filed another motion to dismiss the cases on Friday, December 20, in United States District Court.
Attorney Jeffrey J. Trapani from the Boston law firm of Pierce Davis & Perritano LLP the motion to dismiss on behalf of the town, Chief Storti, and Officer O’Brien. “There are multiple additional examples where the plaintiff has asserted new allegations or changed her allegations, with the overall gist of these changes appearing to relate solely to surviving a motion to dismiss,” Trapani argues in his filing. “The basis of the plaintiff’s complaint, as amended, and the gist of the plaintiff’s opposition is that the GB Defendants should have taken no action in response to the Complainant’s report and that because they did, they are liable to the plaintiff. In support of her claims, the plaintiff relies on unsupported conclusions and conjecture as to the subjective reasons for the GB Defendants’ actions. Absent from the allegations are the objective considerations for taking some action, especially after contacting school officials, who, according to the Complaint, did not offer any explanation for the allegations of the Complainant.”
Trapani argues that, while the police department kept Yorke’s identity confidential at first, his complaint was not made by him anonymously and that “the GB Defendants did not and could not have known the Complainant’s prior issues with [Galdós-Shapiro].”
Trapani goes on to reference the footage from Officer O’Brien’s bodycam while interviewing Galdós-Shapiro and Miles Wheat, who was the school principal at the time of the incident.
“The plaintiff also asks the Court to ignore what can be seen and heard on the video, instead arguing that the video was blocked, that Officer O’Brien only cared about investigating her and not others, and that he searched her personal belongings,” Trapani writes. “The Video negates any reasonable support for these allegations.”
Trapani goes on to reference the decision in the 2023 United States Circuit Court case Baker v. City of Madison, Ala. “As noted in the memorandum of law, at least one circuit has stated that ‘where a video is clear and obviously contradicts the plaintiff’s alleged facts, we accept the video’s depiction instead of the complaint’s account, and view the facts in the light depicted by the video,” Trapani writes. “After all, courts are not required to rely on ‘visible fiction.’”
In her amended complaint filed in late August, Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys claim that the school district, Chief Storti, and Superintendent Dillon violated her First Amendment rights.
“The plaintiff’s most recent iteration of facts now asserts that her use of the book in the classroom was a personal choice and not at all related to any educational activities,” Trapani states. “Indeed, it appears that the plaintiff, in amending her Complaint, has done an about-face with respect to her role as an educator for the District and as advisor for its GSA [Gay Straight Alliance]. She now alleges that the book had nothing to do with either role, but was an individual act of First Amendment expression.”
Trapani argues that this does not shield Galdós-Shapiro from Massachusetts General Law Chapter 272 Section 28, “which makes it unlawful to disseminate certain materials to minors.”
“… [T]here are no allegations that the plaintiff was engaged in constitutionally protected conduct, that she was subjected to an adverse action by the GB Defendants or that any protected conduct was a substantial or motivating factor in the adverse action,” Trapani argues.
In his legal filing, Trapani further argues that Galdós-Shapiro’s claim that the defendants violated the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act (MCRA) in their investigation should be dismissed. “The plaintiff concedes that a claim pursuant to the MCRA cannot be brought against the Town,” Trapani claims. “Again, it is settled law that the MCRA does not apply to municipalities or public officials or employees in their official capacity.”
Trapani goes on to claim that both Chief Storti and Officer O’Brien are entitled to qualified immunity for all of Galdós-Shapiro’s claims. “The plaintiff ignores that these two law enforcement officials were responding to allegations involving potential crimes to children, none of which are protected rights,” Trapani states. “As such, a reasonable officer would not have understood that engaging in a preliminary investigation or inquiry such as the one that occurred here amounted to a violation of the plaintiff’s constitutional rights.”
In a separate motion to dismiss, Superintendent Dillon’s attorney David S. Lawless of Springfield law firm Robinson Donovan, P.C. argues that Galdós-Shapiro’s lawsuit should be dismissed because of multiple changes between Galdós-Shapiro’s first filed complaint made in May and her amended complaint filed in August.
Lawless writes:
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- The Opposition [Galdós-Shapiro’s attorneys] states that the plaintiff ‘never assigned the book to her students in her class or even made it available to them,’ whereas the Amended Complaint states that the plaintiff ‘never assigned the book to her students to read or even made it available to them generally.’ The Amended Complaint is clear that plaintiff, in fact, did lend it to a student.
- The Opposition states that ‘Officer O’Brien reported the Criminal Complaint to Chief Storti, who quickly brought Dr. Dillon into the investigation.’ Comparatively, the Amended Complaint does not allege that the defendant was brought ‘into the investigation’ by Chief Storti. Instead, it alleges that Chief Storti merely ‘called District Superintendent Dr. Dillon to describe the baseless accusations.’
- The Opposition adds new facts that do not appear in the Amended Complaint, such as: ‘Dr. Dillon decided to immediately investigate Ms. Galdos-Shapiro for criminally disseminating obscene material to minors’ and that ‘he agreed with the GBPD that they should head to the Middle School and apprehend Ms. Galdos Shapiro.’
- The Opposition states that ‘shortly afterwards, [the Complainant] berated another female Hispanic Teacher’ while the Amended Complaint alleges ‘[s]everal months later, … the Complainant berated another female Hispanic Teacher.’
- The Opposition also adds that the plaintiff is ‘married to a trans woman.’
The aforementioned additional facts and significant deviations of the Amended Complaint are examples of only a fraction of facts relied on throughout the entirety of the Opposition that are not alleged in the Amended Complaint.
Lawless further argues in the filing that other claims made by Galdós-Shapiro should be dismissed.
As of press time on Monday, December 23, the next hearing in the case has not been scheduled.
Click here for attorney Jeffrey Trapani’s motion to dismiss on behalf of the town of Great Barrington, Police Chief Paul Storti, and Officer Joseph O’Brien.
Click here for attorney David Lawless’s motion to dismiss on behalf of Berkshire Hills Regional School District’ Superintendent Peter Dillon.
