ELIA SUES BISD: CHARGES VIOLATIONS OF KIDS' CIVIL RIGHTS

By Juan  Montoya

The first thing you notice when you pick up a copy of 404th District Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez's lawsuit against the Brownsville Independent School District for allegedly violating her children's constitutional rights is the $1 billion demand.

Conrnejo-Lopez filed the lawsuit alleging the violation under 1983 Civil Rights Act last November 30. At the time she was listed as a plaintiff "individually and as Next Friend" of two children identified by the initials "L.G.L. and I.M.L."

(We are now told that the $1 billion was entered by clerks at the federal courthouse when the plaintiffs did not include a damage figure on their complaint. The clerks automatically opt for the highest level of damages to make the entries.)

In the complaint she asks the court for "declaratory and injunctive relief" and asks for a "temporary restraining order (TRO) and preliminary injunction (PI)" against the district.

That was followed Dec. 6 when she petitioned the court for a temporary restraining order hearing. The next day Judge Andrew Hanen denied her ex-parte motion. Undeterred, Cornejo-Lopez filed for a TRO a second time Dec. 15.

And just yesterday, Hanen agreed to hold the hearing

January 3, 2018, but he issued an order preventing Lopez from representing herself or her "Next Friends" because she is not admitted to the Southern District of Texas and "consequently cannot represent others in this district."

This was followed by Cornejo-Lopez submitting a motion the same day to be allowed to appear "Pro Hac Vice (for on this occasion only). Hanen has not ruled on the motion, but the docket reads: "Terminated 12/18/2017, Lead Attorney to be noticed."

(Some attorneys have told us that a attorney not licensed to practice in this court must be licensed to practice in some other federal court to appear Pro Hac Vice, so Cornejo-Lopez might be out of luck. But she does have Gustavo Acevedo of Pharr as co-counsel and he can represent her if Hanen does not grant her motion.)

In the rambling 36-page complaint and the application for TRO and PI, Cornejo-Lopez says the BISD – and Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas, Carlos Guerra, Theresa Alarcon, and Miguel Salinas, among others – should be enjoined from discriminating and harassing and retaliating against her and her children.

Her complaint includes allegations of violations of free speech, assembly, due process, right o petition, freedom of religion, equal protection of the law, gender, race and national origin discrimination, Federal Education Records Privacy Act (FERPA) violations, violations of privacy, invasion of privacy, retaliation, harassment, intentional infliction of distress under the First and 14th Amendment, by the defendants against her and her two children.

She asks that the court allow her to recover damages, treble damages, attorney's fees and costs of court.

The alleged violations concerning Cornejo-Lopez freedom os speech, assembly and petition center around the BISD administration and board counsel's refusal to allow her to address the board during the public comment sections of the meeting of Sept. 5 to point out course curriculum guides.

She charges that under public comment rules she had the right to address the board in executive session at the next meeting (Sept. 12) to address her concerns. However, she claims that board counsel Baltazar Salazar told her they did not carry anything to the next meeting and told her to file a grievance.

When she showed up on Sept. 12, Salazar told her she would not be able to address the board. In fact, her complaint charges that there was no public comment period on that meeting's agenda. The defendants' refusal to allow her freedom of speech prevented her from informing the board of the bad acts of the administration and BISD employees, she charges.

The issue around her kids include:

1. That Alarcon allowed a student on August 2016 to take a freshman take an Advanced Placement Chemistry course even though the student did not meet the requirements, but that in 2017, her child, L.G.L, was not allowed by Alarcon to take AP Psychology course. Cornejo-Lopez said that L.G.L. met all the course requirements and that Alarcon violated rules to treat similarly situated students to be treated the same.

Cornejo-Lopez also charges that aside from the violations under the Equal Protection class, her child was discriminated because of race because the student allowed to take the AP Chemistry course was a white female and L.G.L. was Hispanic.

2. Cornejo-Lopez also charges that the defendants conspired to delay and ignore some 13 grievances she had filed on behalf of L.G.L for a number of alleged violations of her constitutional rights. She said the district has dragged out hearing the grievances by hiring and firing the investigator who was supposed to hear the report for at least 18 months and no report has been forthcoming. As a result, none of her grievances has been heard, she charges.

3. Cornejo-Lopez charged that former trustee had requested the status of the grievances and that a copy of the summaries were then sent to all the board members and appeared on social media sites such as Chisme, Facebook and El Rrun-Rrun violating her privacy rights under FERPA. The hiring and firing of the investigators and the delays caused by the administration may result in L.G.L. graduating before they are heard, making the grievances moot.

The plaintiffs ask the court for a declaratory judgment that they have exhausted all her administrative remedies and allow them to present them to the court.
Cornejo-Lopez also charged her children were discriminated against when:

1. L.M.L. was not allowed to make up a 0 (zero) she got for not handing in an assignment on time and a teacher did not accept it. Yet, she charges, the teacher took late assignments from three other students and raised their grades but not her daughters's. When the teacher sent an email to her fellow teachers to ask how to deal with Cornejo-Lopez, she charged that it was defamatory, slanderous and libelous and violated her privacy.

Cornejo-Lopez's complaint charge that a golf coach did not allow her daughter to play at a golf tournament in retaliation. However, a mediator found that the proper paperwork to allow her to participate had not been handed in.

She also charges that her daughter was targeted for retaliation when a teacher took a photo of a prayer seeing in a class violating her rights to assembly in prayer.

2. She charged that her daughter was discriminated on the basis of national origin because the district only gave AP Spanish exams to Mexican nationals, recent immigrants to the United States, children whose parents only speak Spanish, future first-generation college students.

Further, she charges that the BISD does not tell parents or students that the district only gives weighed GPA points to students who take the AP Spanish in middle school, only those who take it in high school. She charged that while a teacher named Diego Garcia conspired with another teacher to make a false statement against her daughter, he covered up a situation where he found a teacher and a student having sex in a classroom.

Cornejo-Lopez charges that the retaliation for filing grievances included a teacher taking away an award from another student and giving it to her daughter "to bring discord and conflict to L.M.L. and have (her) isolated from the group."

As part of her prayer for relief, Cornejo-Lopez wants the court to be enjoined from "discriminating and retaliating against L.M.L...regarding the AP Spanish exam and the granting of the GPA weight in high school. In the alternative, that L.M.L. and other students so situated be granted the opportunity to retest and any retest scores be used to grant GPA weight...in high school on the AP Spanish exam.

The weighed GPA scores are of utmost importance and could give some students a leg up when they are vying for salutatorian in their high school class to be automatically awarded $10s is not $100,000s in academic scholarships if they graduate at the top of their class.