Nearly a year after schools nationwide scrambled to adjust to a new surge of Covid-19 cases, government leaders of one Pennsylvania county have filed multiple lawsuits against two local moms to block them from receiving documents the women and their supporters believe may show their county based its school-reopening guidance on Democratic politics, not science.

In late June and early July, Bucks County filed two lawsuits each against Megan Brock and Jamie Walker — four lawsuits total — urging Bucks County's Court of Common Pleas to deny the women access to a slew of emails they requested as part of their quest to determine how their county's reopening guidance changed last August to include more restrictive rules about masks, quarantining, and testing, and to determine who ultimately authored the updated guidance.

County leaders say they have nothing to hide, and insist the records requests were denied because they are either too broad, or because they include privileged information.

The lawsuits are the latest salvo in a heated fight that has sharply divided this community north of Philadelphia. As schools again plan for the start of a school year, and as a new Covid variant spreads across the country, the standoff in Bucks County shows just how divisive Covid-mitigation efforts at schools can still be nearly two and a half years into the pandemic.

Brock and Walker were leaders in the fight to reopen Bucks County schools during the pandemic, and then to keep schools open and operating close to normal. They suspect county officials and two Democratic commissioners had a hand in updating the county's guidance, and possibly overruling their own health director, a strong advocate for in-person learning. They believe Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf's administration coerced the county into adopting its more restrictive Covid policies and its one-size-fits-all approach to school reopening.

Brock, Walker, and their supporters have become thorns in the side of local leaders, filing dozens of records requests — Right-to-Know requests in Pennsylvania — over the last year and speaking out passionately at government meetings. At one point, the county blocked Brock from calling any government telephone lines. Brock said that was unwarranted and unacceptable. The county said it was an accident.

Brock and Walker say they're just trying to answer one simple question: Who authored the updated August 23 school-reopening guidance?

"We wanted to know what happened, because I feel like if you don't know what happened, it's going to just keep repeating itself," Brock told National Review.

The county's two Democratic commissioners have repeatedly called Brock and Walker liars, and accused them of promoting a conspiracy theory and engaging in a political "stunt." A local Democratic club has called them "right-wing extremists and conspiracy nuts."

Bucks County Commission Chairman Bob Harvie Jr. and Vice Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia, the two Democrats on the three-member board, did not respond to multiple phone calls, text messages, and emails from National Review asking them to explain how the guidance changed.

County spokesman Eric Nagy also declined to answer questions about how the guidance was changed and who authored it, writing that "the County has answered these questions ad nauseum for months" in public meetings. He didn't say who answered the questions or when they were answered, or point out a specific public meeting. A review of commission meetings over the last few months did not find public evidence that Nagy's claim is true.

Nagy — a left-wing political operative who has managed several Democratic campaigns over the years, according to his LinkedIn account — accused Brock and Walker in an email of having "partisan goals."

Brock and Walker acknowledge they have become activists in the school-reopening fight. Brock, a small-business owner, is a newly elected Republican committeewoman in her municipality. They say it is state and local Democratic politicians who deserve scorn, not them.

"Politics took over managing Covid for children," Walker said.

Playing Politics or Following the Science?

The fight over school reopening and masking in Bucks County started in the summer of 2020, and Dr. David Damsker, the county health department director, has often been at the center of it. Throughout the pandemic, Damsker has been an advocate of returning kids to school and keeping them there if they weren't sick. His guidance has often conflicted with state and federal messaging. "Dr. Damsker has been saying kids need to be in school, it's safe for them to be in school. And he's basically just been pulverized everywhere," Brock said.

A report last year by the local NPR station about some of Damsker's emails highlighted his controversial approach to schools and Covid. In one email to a school leader he suggested she not "have your parents report Covid to you, any more than they would report influenza to you." Some parents took issue with Damsker's comments that they saw as downplaying Covid's impact on children. In an interview with the Bucks County Courier Times, Damsker said "children are barely affected by this disease," according to the NPR report.

On August 15 last year, with the Covid-19 Delta variant spreading but local cases still low, Damsker's health department released its official 2021-22 school-reopening guidance, which was similarly controversial. The guidance was less stringent than guidance from the CDC and the state health department. It included: a mask-optional policy; targeted and temporary mitigation measures; no limits on classroom capacity; and allowing fully asymptomatic students who have been exposed outside of the home to continue in school normally.

The guidance was "based on science, years of public health policy, 18 months of accumulated local experience with the pandemic, and common sense," the health department wrote.

The health department wanted to keep kids in class as much as possible, because there is a "clear consensus that students learn best while in school, and there is no substitute for the advantages that in-person learning provides. The effects of ongoing Covid-19 mitigation efforts have led to significant learning loss, mental health issues, and social adjustment difficulties in many students."

However, on August 17, two days after the guidance was released, Damsker offered a revision. In a written statement, he said local hospital leaders were worried that an increase in pediatric Covid cases could stress the health system, and recommended starting the year with a school-mask requirement. "As a result of this new information provided by our partner hospitals, we support their recommendation to follow CDC guidance on masking in schools," he wrote.

But, he added, "The remainder of the county's recently released guidance remains in effect."

That mask revision wasn't enough to satisfy local Democrats. On August 20, a Friday, local Democratic Party leaders wrote an email to commissioners Harvie and Ellis-Marseglia, accusing Damsker of "sowing discord" and putting "the lives of the citizens of Bucks County at risk."

"As an employee of Bucks County, is it not your prerogative to relieve him of his duties?" the local Democrat leaders wrote. "If this is something you can do, you should do it."

That Monday, August 23, Pennsylvania's acting health secretary, Alison Beam, sent a letter to Bucks commissioners informing them that Governor Wolf's administration found several aspects of the county’s reopening guidance "alarming."

"I respectfully ask you work with [the Bucks County health department] to update its guidance to align with the CDC and [Pennsylvania Department of Health] guidance," Beam wrote to the commissioners.

Because of Damsker's commitment to keeping kids in school, and because of his history of disagreeing publicly with state and federal health agencies about Covid, some who supported his approach said it would be out of character for Damsker to sign off on Beam's request with little or no pushback.

But later that day, the Bucks County health department did change its guidance. The county's chief operating officer emailed Beam: "The county's guidance was amended in accordance with your request to align with the CDC and PADOH guidance."

The new guidance required more masking, including for student athletes who weren't fully vaccinated; longer quarantines; and enhanced testing and reporting requirements.

To proponents of a more restrictive Covid response, the news was welcomed. But others, including Brock, Walker, and others with the parents group ReOpen Bucks, were displeased. And they had questions. How did the guidance change so suddenly and so drastically, and did Damsker approve of it? Or was this change, impacting 80,000 Bucks County students, driven by politicians with no public-health expertise?

"None of the county commissioners have any public-health experience," Brock noted. "Why on Earth would the Pennsylvania Department of Health not contact the health director? They contacted the politicians, none of whom are doctors or public-health experts."

To make it more confusing, Damsker wasn't talking. He did not respond to phone calls and emails from National Review seeking comment on the updated guidance.

"Dr. Damsker went silent," Brock said.

Taking Citizens to Court

Over the last year, Brock and Walker have fought continuously for emails and documents that might help them understand how the reopening guidance was changed, and who was behind it.

"I'm looking for specific emails as to who actually wrote the August 23 guidance," said Walker. "Because who wrote it, it allowed children to be kept home from school illegally."

Since last fall, Brock and Walker have made more than 80 requests between the two of them, the local LevittownNow news website reported this month. The records the news outlet reviewed "haven't revealed a smoking gun" about how reopening-guidance decisions were made, according to a story about the dispute.

"I'm not doing this just to be mean," Walker said of her numerous records requests. Walker, a stay-at-home mom and former teacher, said the county regularly rejected her requests, found loopholes to avoid fulfilling them, and tried to time her out.

The lawsuits Walker is facing involve two requests she made in February for all of Ellis-Marseglia's emails from both August and September of last year. The county denied her requests, saying they were too broad. At a July commission meeting, Ellis-Marseglia said the county fought the requests because some of the emails likely contain confidential information, many of them pertaining to personal issues like student drug addiction and mental-health crises.

After the county denied her request, Walker appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which ruled in her favor in May, ordering the county to turn the emails over. But rather than provide the records, the county instead sued Walker in the Court of Common Pleas in Bucks County, calling for the judge to reject her records requests.

Walker said she's had to hire an attorney to continue the court fight.

The county also filed two lawsuits against Brock after the Office of Open Records similarly ruled in her favor that she is entitled to several emails she is seeking between commissioners and county staffers. The appeals officer for the case found that the county hadn't proven it had turned over all the responsive records, hadn't proven that the responsive records it withheld are exempt, and said the county had the ability to redact protected information.

Brock, who is in the middle of a similar public-records fight in a neighboring county, said she intends to represent herself in the court case. "It would cost me thousands of dollars in legal fees," she said of hiring a lawyer, though she and Walker suspect that may be the point — to literally make them pay for engaging in the fight with the county.

Both sides of the fight are accusing the other of wasting time and money. Before the July 6 commission meeting, Brock and Walker held a press conference questioning what the county was hiding, and pushing back on the lawsuits against them.

"I guess our commissioners and our Bucks County government finds it acceptable to use your taxpayer money to take private citizens to court hoping that we cannot afford to hire attorneys to fight for what we are entitled to," Walker told the crowd.

During the meeting, Ellis-Marseglia said the amount of "taxpayer dollars that have been spent on these repeated requests, it's extremely upsetting." She claimed Brock and Walker have all the emails they're asking for from August, and she insisted they would find nothing new.

"We don't need to keep revisiting something from August 2021," she said.

The commissioners insist they've answered the questions about the updated guidance repeatedly. But an exchange from the March 2, commission meeting reviewed by National Review found that the commissioners may instead be dodging the primary question.

During that meeting, several attendees called for commissioners to explain how the school-reopening guidance changed on August 23. But rather than addressing the sudden change on August 23, when Beam contacted commissioners, Harvie seemed to have instead addressed the masking guidance that Damsker did, in fact, revise a week earlier, on August 17.

"In terms of mask guidance, who wrote the mask guidance, we've answered this question multiple, multiple times," he said, noting that hospitals reached out to Damsker with concerns after he released his initial August 15 guidance. "That was, as I said, Dr. Damsker who actually was given that information by the hospitals themselves. And it was he who raised the question about, maybe we do need to do this. Because if they're worried about their ability to take care of kids, then we need to do everything that we can to protect the kids."

Nagy, the county spokesman, did not respond to an email from National Review asking about what appears to be either an accidental miscommunication or an intentional dodge.

Brock and Walker said they're committed to getting answers to their questions.

"What are the commissioners hiding? What do these records contain that they don't want the public to see?" Brock asked at the July 6 press conference. "And why are they so afraid of transparency?"