When a legal opinion is the basis for public policy, it shouldn't be kept secret

APS School Board President, Defendant Marty Esquivel wrote a letter that began a long series of violations of my First and Fourteenth Amendments.  He created a public policy denying my free exercise of constitutionally protected human rights.  He did it based upon a legal opinion, bought with money that could have been, should have been, spent in a classroom instead.

Art Melendres

Before the unlawful restraining order was laid upon me, it came to the attention of least two Modrall lawyers; Art Melendres and Patrick McCormick.

Melendres has been APS' lawyer for as long as taxpayers have been pumping money into Modrall via litigation far "in excess of normal for a district this size".

Unless Esquivel ignored Melendres' opinion, the opinion was the basis upon which Esquivel proceeded to violate my rights.

When asked to produce the legal opinions as evidence, Esquivel, by and through lawyers who enjoy the oversight of nobody but Esquivel, claims work product and attorney-client privilege.

Product and privilege allow the truth to be hidden,
neither requires the truth to be hidden.

Why hide the truth, except
to avoid the consequences of telling the truth?

The standards of conduct for which Esquivel is the very senior-most role model in the entire APS, the standards he establishes and enforces upon students; the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected ethical standards of conduct, require Esquivel to set the example by doing more than the law requires, and less than the law allows.

But then Esquivel has never accepted his obligations and responsibilities as a role model of Citizenship, Caring, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility and Trustworthiness.

He blatantly violated my rights, in order to keep me from standing up at a public forum and pointing to his egregious hypocrisy.

He claims he followed his lawyers' advice.

Was the opinion;

It's obviously unconstitutional given the abject lack of justification, but we can keep you out of trouble personally.  

If Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz and Esquivel weren't in cahoots, the Journal would expect Esquivel to explain why he needs to hide the truth about the advice he either accepted or ignored.

Not "how" can he hide the truth, but "why" does he need to?



photos Mark Bralley