The legal fight over the Forest Hills school district’s secret plan to respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions will go forward at the Ohio Supreme Court.
The court’s justices on Wednesday rejected the school board’s request to dismiss the lawsuit, which seeks details about a response plan the board approved in a closed executive session earlier this year.
The Forest Hills board approved the plan at a time when school administrators and other public officials across the country were struggling to respond to the arrival of masked, heavily armed ICE agents in their communities.
Concerns among schools grew in January when 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained with his father, an asylum seeker, in his driveway after returning home from school in Minnesota.
Some schools, including several districts in Ohio, created plans detailing how staff and students should respond if ICE agents showed up at one of their schools. Forest Hills officials acknowledge they created such a plan, but they did so out of public view and, when asked, provided heavily redacted copes of their written plan.
Cincinnati attorney Curt Hartman sued the district, demanding the plan’s release. In his suit, he complained the district’s legal justification for withholding the plan only applies to information related to protecting schools from “attack, interference or sabotage” or from potential “acts of terrorism.”
“We’re glad the case is going forward so the school district will now have to justify to the court and the public … its effort to equate law enforcement officers to terrorists,” Hartman said Wednesday after the court allowed the case to continue.
Forest Hills officials, who could not be reached to comment Wednesday, have disputed that claim, arguing Ohio law does not require the release of the plan and that doing so would jeopardize the safety of students and staff.
School officials asked the Supreme Court in March to dismiss the lawsuit, but the justices ruled Wednesday against that request, allowing the lawsuit, which was filed directly with the Supreme Court, to move forward.
The justices told both sides to file briefs and evidence with the court within the next month.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Supreme Court will hear arguments over Forest Hills schools’ ICE plan
Reporting by Dan Horn, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Dan Horn, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
