“This letter was outrageous. School district lawyers should know better than to threaten parents for raising concerns about their child’s education and treatment by the school” – WILL
The Pittsville, Wisconsin, School District threatened a Wisconsin mom with a defamation suit and the local police chief went to her home twice after she posted a First-Amendment-protected, non-threatening TikTok video showing her daughter sitting away from other students in a wheelchair during a music program.
You can see the video later in this story; the mom was trying to express her belief that her daughter was being separated from other kids.
In a “cease and desist” demand letter last month, the district’s attorney, Shana R. Lewis, wrote mom Amanda Vogel, “We have reached out to you through local law enforcement to request that you remove the TikTok video. You initially agreed to remove the video, but did not followed (sic) through until after several hours and a second visit with the Police Chief.” She demanded that Vogel “cease and desist from engaging in any additional harassing and intimidating behavior toward District educators and support staff.”
There was nothing remotely harassing or threatening about Vogel’s TikTok video or caption.
The chief is Jeremy Duerr, who is also the school resource officer and coach. The Pittsville School District administrator is Jason Knott. We sought comment from both; Duerr said the police report would stand as his comment, and Knott didn’t respond. We exclusively received the police report on the situation. Pittsville is a small town in Wood County in the central part of the state.
“Mr. Knott advised he had contacted the school legal counsel and they suggested asking law enforcement to ask Vogel to take the post down due to possible school safety concerns. He also stated the school would draft a cease-and-desist letter if the post was not removed,” Duerr wrote in the report. He added, “I advised Vogel she did not have to take the video down per her First Amendment right, but for the school safety reason I would appreciate it…. I advised Vogel the school had contacted legal counsel and were prepared to write a cease-and desist order if the video was not removed. I alerted her to the possibility of a civil defamation issue the school could pursue.”
The chief then went back to Vogel’s house a second time and told her he was “concerned about school safety.” Vogel became “visibly distressed,” and said she would take down the post. The district’s lawyer, Lewis, sent Vogel a cease and desist letter anyway that same day.
The school district’s attorney, Shana Lewis, of the law firm Renning, Lewis & Lacy, has surfaced in other cases involving districts in Wisconsin (in Sun Prairie and Baraboo, for example).
Her law firm’s website says she “has significant experience conducting investigations for private and public sector entities concerning allegations of harassment, bullying, and discrimination involving staff and/or students.” She is a member of the Madison College District Board.
WILL Says Shana Lewis’s Letter is ‘an Attempt to Intimidate a Parent’
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) announced on January 16 that it is defending Vogel and noted that she never said anything remotely harassing or threatening. The letter from the lawyer representing the school district “is an attempt to intimidate a parent for criticizing the school district and came after the parent posted online about what the mother saw as the exclusion of her disabled daughter at a school-sponsored music program,” wrote WILL.
“Let us say this as clearly as we can. Ms. Vogel had and has a First Amendment right to state her opinions about how the school district treated her daughter,” WILL wrote.
“This letter was outrageous. School district lawyers should know better than to threaten parents for raising concerns about their child’s education and treatment by the school,” WILL Deputy Counsel, Cory Brewer, said. “We will not tolerate intimidation tactics that chill free speech or attempt to silence families who are advocating for their children.”
What Mom Amanda Vogel Posted
What did mom Amanda Vogel write with the above video that so upset the Pittsville School District?
“We did not plan to homeschool,” she wrote with the TikTok.
“We tried our best to set up a good foundation for her to be successful and
included at school. Unfortunately, there is only so much parents can do on
their end.
Watching her be placed off to the side while her peers stood together, and
realizing no one noticed before the concert, was it for us.
If something this visible was going unnoticed, what else was being missed
when we weren’t around?
#inclusionmatters #inclusiveeducation #homeschooljourney
#parentingmoment.”
The school district, through its legal counsel, “has not identified a single statement that this mother included in her post that could possibly meet the legal standard for defamation under Wisconsin law,” noted WILL. “As Wisconsin courts have made clear, defamation requires a false statement of fact, communicated to a third party, that is unprivileged and capable of defamatory meaning. Criticism, opinion, and advocacy by parents do not meet that standard.”
In addition, school districts, because they are governmental bodies, can’t sue for defamation, according to U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Furthermore, WILL noted that the school district can not hold Vogel accountable for comments other people made who viewed the TikTok video.
What the School District of Pittsville’s Lawyer, Shana Lewis, Wrote Mom Amanda Vogel
Vogel received a letter from attorney Shana R. Lewis with the Renning, Lewis & Lacy law firm, on December 19. Read it here. It was entitled “CEASE AND DESIST.”
Here is the text of the letter in full:
“Please be advised that Renning, Lewis, & Lacy s.c., by the undersigned attorney, represents the School District of Pittsville (“District”). I am writing you on behalf of the District regarding your recent harassing and defamatory post on TikTok, which has resulted in millions of views and thousands of comments – many of them threatening and disturbing. Your post includes the faces of several staff members and sufficient information that members of our community have identified you and your child as residents of the District.
The District has an obligation to maintain the safety of all students, staff, and community members present on our property for legitimate purposes. Indeed, as a Wisconsin public school district, we have the responsibility to maintain an educational atmosphere, to protect educators, support staff, property, and, most important, to preserve the safety and well-being of our students who are present to learn.
We have reached out to you through local law enforcement to request that you remove the TikTok video. You initially agreed to remove the video, but did not followed through until after several hours and a second visit with the Police Chief. Due to your conduct, the District hereby demands that you cease and desist from engaging in any additional harassing and intimidating behavior toward District educators and support staff.
The District will keep us apprised whether you comply with the above demands. If you ignore these demands, the District will report your conduct to law enforcement and explore pursuing appropriate legal action against you, which includes, but is not limited to, seeking a court order prohibiting you from continuing to defame the District and recovering damages related thereto.
Be further advised that I have also informed District staff of their right to pursue appropriate legal action on their own behalf, in regard to your harassment and defamatory comments. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Very truly yours,
Shana R. Lewis
Renning, Lewis, & Lacy, s.c.”
What Did WILL Respond?
Here is WILL’s response letter in full.
“Dear Attorney Lewis:
We represent Amanda Vogel. She has sent us your letter dated December 19, 2025, which you sent on behalf of the School District of Pittsville. We are sending you this letter as a rejection of your unlawful demand that Ms. Vogel cease and desist fromexercising her rights under the First Amendment.
First, we find your letter odd as coming from an attorney. You claim in the letter that Ms. Vogel defamed someone, although you don’t say who. You say that words in a post she made on TikTok were defamatory, but you never identify the words. Finally, you do not cite any cases that would show that anything that she said was defamatory under Wisconsin law.
Your reticence and ambiguities make your letter hard to respond to, perhaps intentionally so, but we will do our best.
First, let’s deal with the lack of an actual plaintiff. In your letter, you say that you represent the School District of Pittsville. We assume you know that under the First Amendment, the school district, as a governmental body, cannot make a claim for defamation. It was recognized in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 299, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964) that “prosecutions for libel on government have
(no) place in the American system of jurisprudence.”
In fact, the First Amendment is not only a shield here for Ms. Vogel’s opinions about how the school district treated her daughter (which will be discussed below) but can also be a sword to defend her right of free speech. As a governmental body, the School District of Pittsville violated her First Amendment rights by sending the police to her door to tell her to stop speaking in public about the district (which will also be
discussed further below) and by hiring you to send a letter intended to intimidate her.
Second, you have not identified anything that she said in her post that was defamatory under Wisconsin law. In her TikTok post, she has a short video of her daughter sitting in her wheelchair separately from the other children in her class during a music program, and then she says as follows:
We did not plan to homeschool.
We tried our best to set up a good foundation for her to be successful and
included at school. Unfortunately, there is only so much parents can do on
their end.
Watching her be placed off to the side while her peers stood together, and
realizing no one noticed before the concert, was it for us.
If something this visible was going unnoticed, what else was being missed
when we weren’t around?
#inclusionmatters #inclusiveeducation #homeschooljourney
#parentingmoment
Her post was quite simple. She believes her daughter was excluded from a school program because her daughter is disabled. In her opinion, that was mean and perhaps indicative of other instances of exclusion of which she was unaware. As a result, she was going to consider homeschooling her daughter.
Can you please tell us which of the words in that post you claim to be defamatory under Wisconsin law? If you do not, we will assume that you cannot because none of the words are actually defamatory.
In that regard, Wisconsin courts have consistently articulated the basic elements required for defamation claims. The Court of Appeals in Wagner v. Allen Media Broad. stated that “[a]s a starting point for all defamation claims, the plaintiff must allege a false statement that was communicated to a third person that is unprivileged and capable of defamatory meaning.” Wagner v. Allen Media Broad., 2024 WI App 9, ¶ 21, 410 Wis. 2d 666, 3 N.W.3d 758, 768.
Let’s examine Ms. Vogel’s TikTok post from that standpoint. There was nothing false in the video. It showed what Ms. Vogel saw on the stage. The written post was not false. It simply sets forth Ms. Vogel’s thoughts and opinions about what she saw. She was not lying about what she thought at the time. She did think her daughter was being excluded and she did consider homeschooling as a result. In fact, she ultimately made the decision to home-school her daughter.
Her statement is also not capable of defamatory meaning. That issue was decided recently in MacCudden v. Johnson, No. 2024AP876, 2025 WL 3012390, at *3 (Wis. Ct. App. Oct. 28, 2025). In that case, the Court of Appeals concluded that opinions and subjective assessments about the performance of others are not capable of being defamatory as a matter of law.
Let us say this as clearly as we can. Ms. Vogel had and has a First Amendment right to state her opinions about how the school district treated her daughter. Perhaps the board members of the School District of Pittsville do not like to see the school district criticized. That may be so, but as government officials, they do not have the right to silence her, and that includes not having the right to send the police to silence her
and not having the right to send you to silence her.
Third, as an attorney, we would have expected you to set forth the relevant facts in your letter and, more importantly, explain why you thought your client had a legal right to demand that Ms. Vogel cease and desist her criticism of the government. But you cite nothing in your letter that gives the School District of Pittsville that right. Your omission in this regard is glaring.
At this point, we want to specifically address the School District of Pittsville’s action of having the Pittsville Police Department come to Ms. Vogel’s door and ask that she remove her TikTok video or else she would face legal action. We are copying the Chief of Police on this letter to obtain his additional response to this part of our letter.
The First Amendment prohibits government officials from “subjecting an individual to retaliatory actions for engaging in protected speech.” Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 256, 126 S.Ct. 1695, 164 L.Ed.2d 441 (2006); Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391, 398, 139 S. Ct. 1715, 1722, 204 L.Ed. 2d 1 (2019).
“Penalties for speech protected under the First Amendment are forbidden.” Surita v. Hyde, 665 F.3d 860, 871 (7th Cir. 2011). The School District’s decision to ask the police to call on Ms. Vogel is precisely such a retaliatory action. Ms. Vogel does want us to say that when the Chief of Police came to her house, he was polite and professional in speaking with her. But even though Ms. Vogel acknowledges that the Chief was polite and professional, he should not have been at her door in the first place. The School District of Pittsville should not have involvedthe Police Department in this matter, and when asked, the Police Department should have declined.
We surmise that your main (and perhaps only) concern with the TikTok video was the reaction to the post, and that this concern led to the request for its removal. The reactions of third parties, however, are not attributable to Ms. Vogel and do not diminish her right to express her views. See, e.g., Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4 (1949). To the extent that the School District wanted to explain to Ms. Vogel that it had concerns about her criticism of the School District in her TikTok video, the Superintendent, or the principal, or some other school official could have discussed that with her. There was no reason for the School District to send police to her doorstep.
Based upon the above, Ms. Vogel rejects your demand that she cease and desist in her speech critical of the School District of Pittsville. After the visits from the Police Department, Ms. Vogel changed her post from public to private because she did not want to get in trouble with the police. However, she has now changed the post back to public.
Ms. Vogel is also notifying both the School District of Pittsville and the Pittsville Police Department that she is considering her next steps in defending her right to free speech and to prevent future conduct by the School District of Pittsville to interfere with the free speech of others.
Ms. Vogel hopes the School District will reflect on this situation and consider how it engages with parents who raise concerns about their children, particularly ensuring that parents are free to express their views without being threatened or silenced.”
The WILL letter was signed by Brewer and WILL managing vice president Dan Lennington.
Table of Contents
