Ex-LR5 school board member alleges board ‘conspiracy’ against him in federal lawsuit
A former Midlands school board member is back in court with a federal lawsuit alleging conspiracy among some fellow board members and school district personnel to violate his First Amendment rights.
Ken Loveless, a former member of the Lexington-Richland 5 school board, filed suit May 12 in federal court against three former board members for the Chapin-Irmo area district — Michael Cates, Beth Hutchison and Ed White — as well as former school district attorney Michael Montgomery.
The lawsuit alleges the defendants and several others named throughout the 54-page suit conspired to “retaliate” against Loveless for speaking about concerns related to the construction of a Chapin-area elementary school.
Loveless alleges the four of them conspired to accuse him of ethics violations related to his relationship with Contract Construction, the firm that built Piney Woods Elementary School, which opened in 2021. Loveless’ company had a contract to work with the construction firm on another project at the time he was questioning the firm’s work at the elementary school.
He was ultimately charged with violating the state’s Ethics Act, and was fined more than $6,000 by the S.C. Ethics Commission. Loveless is appealing that decision, denying that he did anything improper.
Rather, Loveless alleges in his lawsuit, it was the “cabal” of school district officials who worked to protect their relationship with Contract Construction by seeking to silence his criticism of the Piney Woods project. For a time, Loveless recused himself from discussion or oversight of the project.
“Defendants and others retaliated against Plaintiff for exercising his right to free speech by launching a retaliatory attack against Plaintiff, in an attempt to obstruct, deter and chill Plaintiff’s rights,” according to the lawsuit, filed by attorney Desa Ballard.
Hutchison and White were critics of Loveless’ relationship with Contract Construction at the time, while Cates was the school board chairman and Montgomery the school district’s attorney.
At one point, the lawsuit names 10 other “persons who participated in the conspiracy,” including former school board chairman Robert Gantt; Contract Construction President Greg Hughes; former school district engineer Dan Neal; former Superintendent Christina Melton, who controversially resigned in 2021 after repeatedly butting heads with Loveless and others on the board; Kim Benson, the woman who filed the initial ethics complaint against Loveless; current school board member Kevin Scully and district parent Leslie Stiles, both of whom were sued by Loveless for defamation after making critical remarks about him online; former Superintendent Stephen Hefner, who was also sued by the school district after he questioned the deal for hiring an interim superintendent; April Alsup, another frequent critic of Loveless; and Bristow Marchant, a reporter for The State who covers Lexington-Richland 5.
While none of the 10 are named as defendants in the case, all were involved as “part of the retaliatory attack created, planned and executed by the Defendants,” the lawsuit alleges. Other “public officers and employees who orchestrated, participated in and supported Defendants’ involvement in the conspiracy ... are not named as Defendants.”
White, an attorney at Columbia law firm Nelson Mullins, has “used his influence” to “plan, initiate, execute and perpetuate the retaliatory attacks” against Loveless even after White left office in 2021, the lawsuit claims, as well as “to directly or indirectly manipulate certain public officials who remain in office to do his bidding.”
Loveless’ suit notes that one of White’s colleagues served as the attorney for Hefner and Hughes in separate disputes with Loveless, while another previously served as chairman of the S.C. Ethics Commission. ”Plaintiff has reason to believe that White may have ghost written some of the documents that have been issued by the State Ethics Commission during the same period of time as the ongoing retaliatory actions which form the basis of this complaint,” the suit claims.
The four named defendants did not respond to requests from The State for comment on the lawsuit before publication.
Loveless has a history of legal disputes with several of the alleged conspirators. Both Scully and Stiles filed counterclaims that Loveless’ suit violated their First Amendment rights to criticize a public official, and the suit against Stiles was dismissed in December.
As part of that suit, Loveless subpoenaed depositions from nine other people loosely connected to the case, including at least one Lexington-Richland 5 school teacher, and subpoeaned the social media giant Facebook for information on 31 individual and group pages, many of them belonging to the alleged conspirators in Loveless’ latest suit.
Meanwhile, Hefner filed a countersuit against Loveless, fellow board members Jan Hammond and Catherine Huddle, and the Jaramillo Accounting Group for what Hefner described as defamatory claims about his time as superintendent in an audit conducted by Jaramillo. Hefner alleges those claims were inserted into the audit report in retaliation for his raising concerns about the district’s hiring of a new superintendent.
Both Montgomery and White were subpoenaed for testimony in Loveless’ ethics hearing, along with Hughes. Montgomery, whom Loveless’ latest suit accuses of acting as Hefner’s “consigliere” at the district, was relieved of his subpoena by the Ethics Commission on attorney-client privilege grounds, while Hughes and White were required to answer a limited set of questions.
At the time, White said Loveless’ actions were “harassment” based on White’s previous criticism of Loveless’ relationship with Contract Construction and their public disagreement over the handling of Melton’s resignation. White filed an affidavit attesting to hostile conduct by Loveless and others toward Melton that led to her leaving the school district. The affidavit was submitted as part of a lawsuit filed by The State senior editor Paul Osmundson that claimed the board initially violated the Freedom of Information Act by agreeing in private to accept Melton’s resignation. Loveless says in his latest lawsuit that the claims in White’s affidavit are false.
In his suit, Loveless asks for damages for the harm the alleged conspiracy has done to his reputation. He notes that last year the former board member “lost his bid for re-election by a hand full of votes, most likely due to the retaliatory actions of Defendant.”
Loveless lost the election by 16 votes.
“Plaintiff’s reputation has been damaged largely among the audience of uneducated, ill-informed and naïve members of the public for whose benefit the retaliatory attacks were directed,” the lawsuit says. “Plaintiff’s reputation as a skilled commercial contractor among his contemporary professionals has been damaged as well, but at present the majority of Plaintiff’s contemporaries saw the retaliation for what it was, a juvenile attempt to protect the financial greasing of the wheel among contractors and District Five... Only time will tell if Plaintiff’s professional reputation has been damaged to any significant degree as a result of the cabal which planned and launched the retaliatory attacks against Plaintiff, which continue to this day.
“It is hoped that the reputational damage effected by Defendants and others is limited to unsophisticated and minimally competent individuals who think social media is a real world, some of whom appear to have difficulty differentiating between what is on social media and reality.”
This story was originally published May 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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