The Megyn Kelly Show - Top Exec Resigns and Turns Down $1 Million to Speak Freely on COVID Hypocrisy, with Jennifer Sey ｜ Ep. 262

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.440 Today, we'll be speaking with parents who are fighting back over COVID restrictions.

00:00:20.880 Now that mask mandates are being lifted, you see, mask enthusiasts across the country are filing lawsuits

00:00:27.580 under the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep the mandates in place.

00:00:33.520 Will they ever give it up? And will this tactic work? Because it's happening in several states.

00:00:39.820 Later, we go to ground zero in the fight, which is in Pennsylvania, with an attorney,

00:00:44.060 a school board member, and a parent involved in all of this.

00:00:46.700 But first, we are joined for an exclusive interview with the now former president of Levi's, Levi's Jeans.

00:00:54.800 Jennifer Say was a self-described left of left of center, Elizabeth Warren supporter.

00:01:01.360 And no one at her company cared about her political advocacy then.

00:01:05.760 That all changed, however, with the pandemic and lockdowns that had her kids, like so many others,

00:01:11.940 and her community falling behind.

00:01:15.160 Well, she has now resigned her position. She was in line to become the next CEO. 0.99

00:01:18.320 So she has now resigned as president of Levi's after blowback internally and externally,

00:01:25.040 so that she can speak freely about her feelings and about what happened to her at Levi's.

00:01:31.780 And she joins me now. Jen, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

00:01:34.960 Thanks for having me, Megan. I'm a big fan of your show.

00:01:38.160 Oh, thank you.

00:01:38.980 So I think what you did is very brave.

00:01:42.660 You spoke out repeatedly while at the company and then in the end rejected a seven-figure number

00:01:47.740 so you could tell your story. And so let me just confirm that.

00:01:51.580 So when it was clear to you, Levi's had had it with you speaking out about COVID,

00:01:57.780 they offered you a million dollars to go quietly.

00:02:00.580 They wanted you. You believed they'd have you sign a nondisclosure.

00:02:03.720 And what did you tell them?

00:02:04.820 Well, yeah, it was clear that there was not going to be a path forward for me at the company,

00:02:12.220 especially since, you know, the seat I sit in or sat in up until Sunday is really the seat that

00:02:18.760 leads to CEOs. So they certainly can't have someone in that seat if that's not a viable option.

00:02:26.160 And yeah, you know, they wanted me to stick around for a bit.

00:02:29.500 Um, and it's inevitable you sign an NDA, um, when you, when you get a severance package,

00:02:36.980 um, not just as an executive, as anyone. And I knew I didn't want that. I wanted to,

00:02:42.240 um, be able to talk about what happened. Um, it was important to me, uh, because the issue,

00:02:49.360 you know, I've been speaking out in defense of kids and I know we'll talk about that,

00:02:53.000 but I think the other issue at stake is really about free speech and the stifling of dissent.

00:02:57.640 And, you know, I can't talk about that in as powerful a way if I can't tell my story.

00:03:03.520 Yes. Oh my gosh. It's, this is how they muzzle you. I mean,

00:03:07.260 I wouldn't know anything about that, Jen. I would have no idea what it's like to have a company muzzle

00:03:12.260 you in order to give you, well, it could be severance or it could just be salary to which

00:03:16.140 you're contractually, um, entitled. You know, maybe sometimes the, the company signs an actual deal

00:03:21.520 saying you are owed this money and then they won't give it to you unless you sign one of these

00:03:25.960 agreements. I'm just saying out of the ether that can happen. Um, but let's get back to you.

00:03:31.280 So let's maybe don't know 22 years ago. Let's go back a little further so that our, our audience

00:03:36.900 knows, uh, who you are. I mean, you're a, you're a, an award winning, you're a national champ,

00:03:42.140 uh, in gymnastics, uh, 1986, you are a national champion. That's correct. Often known as the worst

00:03:49.720 national champion ever. I, I, I wear that with pride. What? It's not challenge. It's fine.

00:03:57.580 You were big in the gymnastics world and that set you up for a career in leadership and exposed you

00:04:03.940 to some, to some world travel. And you wrote a great piece for Barry Weiss's Substack yesterday

00:04:08.100 about sort of trips to Russia and how much they loved American gear, like jeans, and you bring them

00:04:13.940 over there. And it just sort of gave you a taste. This is back in the eighties when we're still in the

00:04:17.600 cold war for people's, maybe not leaders, but people's respect for America and their desire to

00:04:25.320 live freely the way we at least used to over here. Yes. I, um, was very lucky in 1986, as you

00:04:35.680 mentioned, I was the national champion in gymnastics. It was somewhat unexpected. Um, and you know,

00:04:42.460 this is in the years when in the throes of, you know, all the conflict around the Olympics and

00:04:47.420 there were boycotts, there was boycotts in a boycott in 1980, the U S boycotted the Olympics,

00:04:52.020 um, in 84, when it was in LA, the Russians boycotted. And so, um, Ted Turner started this

00:04:59.980 thing called the goodwill games. And the intention was really to take the politics out of sports,

00:05:04.460 um, which I think is, you know, interesting, a bit impossible, I would say these days,

00:05:10.460 but certainly interesting. Um, it always seemed very sad to me that these athletes that had trained

00:05:14.880 their whole lives, you know, could miss out on this dream that they'd trained so hard for because

00:05:20.440 of politics outside of their control. So I won the nationals in 86 and I traveled to Moscow for the

00:05:26.900 goodwill games, uh, with a bunch of my teammates. And I was told bring five of ones, you know,

00:05:33.080 there's a symbol of all that is right and good, um, with our country about freedom and inclusion

00:05:38.840 and, you know, democracy. And I really, you know, the Russians were the best in the world

00:05:43.260 at the time. And so to be able to trade with them for leotards and pins and, you know, sweatsuits,

00:05:50.200 uh, five Oh ones were the ticket. So I filled my suitcase with very tiny five Oh ones and was able

00:05:55.780 to trade, which was pretty, uh, pretty awesome. And I know what you mean. I think we're about the same

00:06:01.820 age and you used to go to other countries as an American and be super proud to be an American

00:06:09.840 and, and sort of understood we did and others did that we were the home of the free, that this was

00:06:16.560 the most exciting, amazing place on earth to live because anything was possible. The American dream

00:06:22.340 was possible here. You could come from nothing and make everything. And that we had these principles

00:06:27.820 that we held so dear over here, which were shockingly unusual in most parts of the world

00:06:32.960 about free speech and due process and our independence, fierce independence and small

00:06:38.000 government and all of it. Right. So I get that. And I'm sure that was baked into you baked into you

00:06:44.040 as it was most of us. Gen Xers. Yeah, I think we are about the same age. Um, yeah. I mean,

00:06:50.000 there was this notion of rugged individualism, you know, be who you are, live authentically,

00:06:56.080 speak your mind. Um, I certainly grew up with that instilled in me from my parents. Um, and I grew

00:07:02.960 up with a lot of advantages. Certainly. Um, I worked really hard in the gym, uh, punishingly hard,

00:07:08.680 too hard. I would argue no child should actually do, um, what I had to do. Uh, but you know, I definitely

00:07:15.320 believed in, um, you know, being able to speak out now, I will say the environment in gymnastics

00:07:22.000 is one of, um, instilled obedience. I mean, obedience was the highest virtue. You know,

00:07:30.040 you just kept your mouth shut when abuse was all around you. And in fact, you didn't even think of it

00:07:35.380 as abuse. It was just the way things operated and you knew that you felt really bad. Um, you were

00:07:41.360 really hungry and you were humiliated because you were weighed in twice a day and your weight was

00:07:45.640 announced on a loudspeaker if you gained a quarter pound, but you know, I was known as the stoic. I

00:07:50.660 didn't ever say anything. I trained on a broken ankle for two years. Uh, there were known sexual

00:07:56.400 abusers on staff. In fact, um, you know, the national team coach at the time has now been banned from the

00:08:03.380 sport for, uh, for raping an athlete, but you were not to talk about these things because you

00:08:08.920 were to protect the, you know, the reputations of USA gymnastics, as well as the coaches, you know,

00:08:15.380 the high profile coaches. So you just shut your mouth and you kept training and you didn't really

00:08:19.720 understand that all your friends and, uh, teammates were suffering as well. It seemed like, well, I can't

00:08:26.040 say anything because look, they're all handling it. Um, but when I came out of the sport, I was really,

00:08:30.660 really suffering. And this is all to say, I understood those values, um, you know, that you talk about

00:08:37.200 those American values of individualism, but I was certainly trained not to exercise them.

00:08:43.700 And it's been a long road, um, to kind of overcome that obedience that was so deeply instilled in us

00:08:50.180 as child athletes. You were also though, at the same time, learning how to overcome massive obstacles

00:08:55.960 and challenges, not just your competitors, but as you point out your injuries, there was a story about

00:09:01.740 you. Was it right before the national competition, but with two black eyes and broken bones,

00:09:07.080 you took a fall on the beam. Can you just, can you just tell that story? Cause not everybody's

00:09:11.880 got this thing that would make them get back up and keep fighting. It was 1985. Um, I was a member

00:09:18.660 of the national team. Um, and you know, I first made my national, my first national team in I think

00:09:23.480 1981. So I was, you know, 11 years old. It's a very young sport, as I'm sure, you know, although I'm

00:09:30.280 pleased to see that, you know, it's, it's becoming more possible to do the sport a bit, a bit longer

00:09:36.160 with the right training methods. Um, and by 1984, I was sort of, you know, I was a senior. So that's

00:09:43.740 the teams that travel and go to world championships and things like that. Um, but I really wanted to

00:09:49.140 break into the top six. I was sort of, you know, hovering around, around, you know, seven, eight,

00:09:55.220 nine. And I begged my parents to let me go to this gym in Allentown. That was a top club,

00:10:00.140 the national national training center. I went there in 1983 and by 1985, I had broken in. I think

00:10:06.340 I placed six at a nationals and then we had world championship trials and, uh, you know, that was

00:10:12.700 going to be my first major international competition. And it was a big question mark as to whether I'd

00:10:17.300 make it. You know, I certainly wasn't firmly established in that group. And a couple of days

00:10:21.640 before, as I was training at home and starving myself because I needed to make the weight that they

00:10:27.900 gave me, I hadn't eaten in quite some time. Um, I fell on beam and I hit my head, uh, and I fell

00:10:35.700 to the floor and I was sort of dizzy for a moment. I put my hand to my head and there was blood and

00:10:41.840 they took me to the hospital. Of course I ended up had, had broken a finger and, uh, or two fingers

00:10:47.240 and, um, had needed stitches in my head, which I did not get because they didn't want me to have to shave

00:10:52.140 the front of my head. Cause that would look bad. It's a very aesthetically driven sport.

00:10:56.100 And the doctor said to me, you know, just know you could get black eyes because sometimes when

00:11:01.640 you hit your head, it bleeds downwards, but I left and I was fine. I went to school the next morning

00:11:06.600 and mid morning, everybody was staring at me. I looked fine when I went to school, but by mid

00:11:11.700 morning, everybody was staring at me and I went into the bathroom and I had two huge shiners.

00:11:16.760 Like it had bled downward into my face and I was sent to the nurse's office. And of course they

00:11:23.360 were concerned that there was abuse at home. And I reassured them by saying, no, no, no,

00:11:27.920 this is from the gym. And they're like, Oh, okay. That's okay. I did this to myself.

00:11:32.140 Yeah, I did it to myself. I'd been sent twice to the nurse's office once because I had a bunch

00:11:36.400 of scrapes and bruises on my face. And every time it was fine because it was in the gym and you know,

00:11:42.580 this club in this, this was an Allentown was sort of heroic. You know, everybody knew about the

00:11:48.040 Parkettes. That was the name. And so if you said it was from the gym, there was no, it was just sort

00:11:52.460 of dismissed as well. That's, that's fine. You can get black eyes and break your foot anyway.

00:11:56.980 So I went to world championship trials with two black eyes and two broken fingers and ended up

00:12:02.760 placing second, which was the highest rank I'd ever achieved. So yeah. Then I went to world

00:12:09.960 championships from there, but I, yes, I had two black eyes and a couple of broken fingers,

00:12:13.460 but this was sort of standard operating procedure. I'd broken my ankle the year before. And I had gone

00:12:19.880 back to training in like 10 days, you know, got the cast off so I could keep training. It certainly

00:12:24.200 wasn't healed to me. It's, I take your point about obedience in a sport like gymnastics and how it's

00:12:31.600 reinforced over and over. But as I was reading your story, I also saw the development of something

00:12:36.120 else, just a tenacity, you know, getting, getting knocked down and getting backed up and back up and

00:12:41.280 having obstacles put in your way of something that you want. And you just keep jumping over them. You know,

00:12:47.100 you just keep, you jump over them, hurt, you jump over them, hobbled, you just keep jumping over

00:12:50.900 them. You're really not easily stopped, which of course becomes relevant over the past two years.

00:12:58.580 Right. And so to jump forward from the gymnastics to the start of your career at Levi's, and I should

00:13:04.560 mention, this is in San Francisco. That's where you've been based all this, you know, past 20 plus

00:13:08.440 years. But 22 years ago, you joined them in a junior position, marketing director, work your way up,

00:13:13.640 chief marketing officer, global brand president. You know, clearly you're doing well, your career's

00:13:19.380 going well. And you say that during all this time, not only were they fine with you taking political

00:13:25.960 positions online, you know, a lot of companies don't like that. Levi's is fine with it. But even

00:13:31.140 Levi's would take political positions to San Francisco based. So not particularly surprising. But all of that

00:13:36.620 was a okay up until more recently. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I mean, in all honesty,

00:13:42.960 and I'm thinking, you know, I, I'm ever evolving my views, which I think is, is good. I think, you

00:13:48.640 know, we always should stay open to new, new inputs. But I'll admit, it was always one of the things I

00:13:54.260 loved about the company. You know, we, we used a phrase, profits through principles, you know, take the

00:14:00.940 harder right over the easier wrong. And I think especially when it pertained to employees, it was

00:14:05.980 really meaningful to me. And it was one of the reasons I stayed there so long. It was the first

00:14:10.820 Fortune 500 company to offer same sex partner benefits. You know, that's way before anybody ever

00:14:17.120 talked about marriage equality. And they certainly got blowback for these things. It was only quite

00:14:23.080 recently when we started, I should stop saying we, when they started talking out, you know, from a not

00:14:32.040 just internally, but to, to our consumers and our fans about stances that we, we were taking inclusive

00:14:38.320 of LGBTQ rights and equality, women's equality, civic engagement through, you know, voting, that was a

00:14:46.240 big one. And so yes, we were not, we were not shy about it, sometimes taking controversial stances,

00:14:53.060 um, and so that's, what's all the more troubling about this, because it can't be said that we just

00:14:59.400 don't take stances. We don't speak publicly. We do. It's just this, it's literally what I was saying.

00:15:06.660 I mean, we ran a campaign that I led. I was the architect of, um, called use your voice. And,

00:15:12.840 you know, I meant it. I meant it when I led that campaign, I meant stand up, say it, say the thing,

00:15:20.920 say what you care about, make a difference. Individuals can make a difference.

00:15:25.020 And yet when they, when they were pushing it, they never dreamed that you would,

00:15:28.600 you would know. And I wasn't prescribing politics. They didn't believe in.

00:15:32.260 That's right. And, and I wasn't prescribing the content of use your voice. I was

00:15:37.080 asserting the value of simply using one voice. And, you know, it just became very clear in the last

00:15:45.040 two years that, oh no, don't say that. Not that content. What you were upset about was something

00:15:53.860 that is now universally condemned, pretty much universally, um, which is school closures. It's

00:15:59.080 not even like you were out on the thinnest read, you know, saying, I don't want vaccine mandates.

00:16:04.380 That would be more controversial in, in left-wing circles, but like, don't close the schools.

00:16:09.780 Eh, like that was what they were so upset about. Yeah. I mean, that's, what's sort of hard to

00:16:17.220 swallow about all of this. And, you know, I, I have been very focused on schools and kids in

00:16:24.640 particular, you know, I have views on, on some of the other aspects of all of this. Um, but I,

00:16:30.380 you know, uh, this has been an extension of child advocacy that started when I wrote my book about

00:16:36.180 the abuses in the sport of gymnastics and then made a film in 2020 athlete day, or that came out in

00:16:41.700 2020, which further exposed the abuses and the crimes of Larry Nassar and featured the brave

00:16:47.540 survivors who, who basically sent him to prison. So I just viewed this as an extension of that it's

00:16:53.340 children. I don't even view that as politics. I mean, that's not political. Isn't that something

00:16:59.380 we can all agree on children and their right to a fair and equal education? It doesn't, you know,

00:17:05.560 people sort of keep deeming this political speech. I mean, I have to be honest with you. I never

00:17:09.680 really even thought of it as political. It's like kids getting to go to school. Really? That's

00:17:15.140 political. And, you know, I, I very quickly became aware that this, I, when I first started,

00:17:20.820 it was March of 2020. Like it was immediate. Um, cause it just seemed so obvious to me that this

00:17:26.700 was wrong. The age, remote learning was a joke. Yeah. And that the age stratification of risk,

00:17:32.000 I mean, you know, what following what was happening in Italy closely, the median age of

00:17:36.020 death was 81. Children were gratefully spared. Um, and so it didn't seem controversial to me.

00:17:42.580 That's how naive and stupid, I guess I was. I quickly learned that it was when I was, you know, 0.91

00:17:49.120 arguing with friends on and family on Facebook, I sort of stopped going on Facebook and I went over

00:17:54.860 to Twitter where I could argue with strangers essentially. Um, and it's just, how old are

00:18:01.780 your kids now? Well, I have four kids, so I have two older, uh, 21 and 18 who are in college and I

00:18:09.180 have two younger, uh, seven and five. Okay. And, um, so yeah, you're watching your, your seven and

00:18:16.120 five-year-old do absolutely nothing. I mean, it's what, what they were doing. Remote schooling is

00:18:19.620 totally pointless. It doesn't get much better as they get older, but I had a, I had a seven-year-old

00:18:24.000 during the lockdown and he absolutely did nothing. I mean, it was completely pointless. It was like

00:18:27.660 online babysitting. Yeah. It's absurd. I mean, for my, my child is seven. Now he's in first grade.

00:18:33.420 We moved to Denver and he's in first grade here. We came in the middle of kindergarten last year,

00:18:37.840 so he could have some of a first year of school. It was a joke. I mean, we didn't make him do it.

00:18:43.440 Like he can't read. How's he going to type and do zoom school? It's like the dumbest thing ever.

00:18:49.180 And, you know, if you could say that a six-year-old was depressed, which I think you can, 0.99

00:18:55.300 you know, we were just getting more and more concerned. And, you know, we were a family living

00:18:59.420 in a, a nice apartment, but an apartment with no yard in San Francisco, the playgrounds were closed

00:19:05.260 for nine months, playgrounds. It was just cruel. And California was just, you know, California

00:19:12.520 school stayed shut longer than any other state in the country. Um, you know, I could sort of accept it

00:19:18.900 in the spring of 2020, kind of when we, you could argue, we didn't know that much by fall

00:19:24.280 of 2020, when the private schools all opened and the public schools, which my kids attend

00:19:29.560 stayed closed. Then I was like, well, this is just classes ridiculousness. Like how can anyone

00:19:36.680 stand for this? How can we think this is okay? How can we stay? We care about equality and only let

00:19:42.460 the wealthy kids go to school. Um, and my kids do have privilege and I know there'll be okay.

00:19:48.000 And we were able to, you know, we have good wifi and all that, but they do go to public school and

00:19:52.940 I've always wanted them to go to public school. I believe in the public school system. Uh, but in

00:19:58.760 the fall, it became clear schools weren't going to open even then. And I just became incensed.

00:20:02.740 And then in the spring, when they put T you know, they prioritize teachers for vaccination promise

00:20:08.080 that would be the end. And they still didn't open the schools. That's when I just, I couldn't take

00:20:13.660 it anymore. So you had been speaking out, um, from the beginning, you'd been meeting with the mayor's

00:20:19.660 office. You've been writing op-eds. You'd been going on social media. You'd been just demanding

00:20:23.520 that the schools open back up again. I mean, especially in retrospect, not a controversial

00:20:28.420 position and 100% the right position. And the blowback began internally. I mean, it sounds like it

00:20:37.240 goes up and down the ranks, your fellow employees, HR, corporate communications, all the way up to

00:20:44.440 eventually the CEO of the company. That's where we're going to pick it up after I squeeze in this

00:20:49.240 quick break. Don't go away. Jennifer's staying with us. So Jen, how did you first experience the

00:21:02.000 blowback? Well, it sort of started kind of slowly. Um, like I said, I had been outspoken about kids in

00:21:09.500 school since literally March, 2020. So the very beginning, I didn't have a large following on

00:21:15.560 social media at the time. I sort of thought, well, no one's on Twitter. I guess they're not paying

00:21:20.720 attention. Um, that boy was I wrong. Um, and by the summer of 2020, I did get a call, um, from our head

00:21:28.580 of corporate communications, my peer, my friend saying, you know, you might really want to think

00:21:34.680 about toning it down. And I explained, as I've explained to you, that this really was an extension

00:21:40.260 of my advocacy for children and public school children in particular were really suffering.

00:21:44.580 And I felt really strongly about it. So are you telling me I have to stop? Well, no, of course we

00:21:49.660 can't do that. And I said, okay, then, then I'm not going to, but I'll be careful. Um, but then the

00:21:55.440 calls kept coming, um, you know, throughout the summer. And then by the fall, you know,

00:22:00.040 there were some really interesting articles starting to, to be published. Uh, there was

00:22:04.320 the Alec McGillis piece and ProPublica. And I thought, well, the dam is going to break on this.

00:22:10.340 People are going to acknowledge and recognize that the school closures are wrong and that,

00:22:14.760 you know, there's harm being done. And I thought I wrote a formal proposal, um, to, to many of my

00:22:20.500 peers at the company saying, why don't we take a stand? We've been so outspoken on equality.

00:22:25.440 Just to be clear, are we talking fall of 2021? There's been so many, that's how long we've

00:22:31.740 been dealing with this fall. I know we've been in this a while, um, but it was the fall of 2020,

00:22:36.340 I think in October. And I wrote a formal proposal to say, you know, we've been so outspoken on all

00:22:41.000 of these issues. We use our influence. Um, why don't we do it here? This is fundamentally an issue

00:22:46.500 of equality because it's disadvantaged children primarily that are in, you know, disproportionately

00:22:51.660 in the public schools. Plus it's affecting parents, you know, that work for us. They can't

00:22:56.420 work, right. The mothers are doing childcare. Um, and I cited some data and some of the pieces that,

00:23:04.500 you know, were being written, like I said, by Alec McGillis, who's written so beautifully on the

00:23:08.820 subject. And, you know, while they empathized, you know, the, the response simply was we don't weigh in

00:23:16.280 on hyperlocal issues and the real, you know, kind of kick in the pants was, and our execs kids go to

00:23:24.060 private. So this doesn't really look good for us. And I said, I, mine go to public. I'm an exec. I can

00:23:29.480 be the voice. I can be the face. Um, but it was just a no. And, and they, they did, um, you know,

00:23:35.620 I was introduced to folks in the mayor's office and, and like I said, you know, by, by peers at the

00:23:40.140 company. And so, you know, it wasn't contentious really, um, that I'd written this proposal and

00:23:47.280 that it was rejected, but it really set off alarm bells for me, at least the rationale.

00:23:51.620 But meanwhile, can I just say like the fact that there are executives who have kids in private,

00:23:56.600 that, that only, I think makes it, makes them look better to be advocating for the kids who are,

00:24:02.320 it's like, they could just go on with their merry lives and forget about the public school kids.

00:24:05.560 Wouldn't it be nicer if those who have the means to put their kids in private school actually

00:24:10.040 used whatever forums they have? And they're probably significant, um, to, to go back and

00:24:15.260 rescue the other kids. Well, I, exactly. Um, I, yes. And one of my closest friends that has been

00:24:22.800 in this with me in San Francisco, her kids don't go to public school. Her name is Laura Fagan. Her kids

00:24:28.560 don't go to public and that she cares anyway. Are we only supposed to care about things that affect us?

00:24:35.440 I mean, one of those sort of, you know, things people are saying, well, she's so privileged me, 0.59

00:24:40.660 you know, she should just shut up. It's like, so are people, I'm not denying that I've been very lucky

00:24:46.560 and I have privilege and my kids too, but does that mean I'm not supposed to care at all about

00:24:51.040 people that don't? That's what makes it better. You could be sitting, I'm sure you can afford a

00:24:54.680 tutor. You, like you said, you've got the laptops, you've got the wifi, you can, you probably have very

00:24:59.400 sophisticated friend circles if you needed to via remote learning to get your friends what they need and

00:25:03.520 your kids what they need. It's the people who don't have means, who need advocates, who don't

00:25:08.200 have high power positions at massive corporations or can get on cable news primetime. Those are the

00:25:14.680 people who, they need people like you to, to make a stink. This is, that's all just bullshit. Those 1.00

00:25:19.960 excuses are bullshit to try to get you to be quiet in a message that they didn't support. 1.00

00:25:24.820 Yes, all of that. I completely, I completely agree. Um, and I, you know, I don't think it takes 0.99

00:25:31.920 a ton of imagination to know how these children are being harmed. I mean, I obviously know the

00:25:38.720 families in public school because my children have been in public school in San Francisco since,

00:25:42.500 you know, 2005. So I can see it with my own eyes, but I don't think even if you can't, it takes,

00:25:48.540 it's a total failure of imagination to not believe or understand that these children are suffering.

00:25:53.860 It also just reveals the hypocrisy, obviously. Um, because the real reason was, you know,

00:26:01.360 it makes us look bad and it also goes against the, the democratic narrative right now. Um,

00:26:09.300 and you know, I'm a lifelong Democrat. I've said this, you know, publicly many times you've mentioned

00:26:14.520 it. I I've never not been a registered Democrat until very recently. I'm now unaffiliated. That's

00:26:19.940 what they call it here in Colorado. Um, and I just feel it's a total failure by the democratic party.

00:26:27.240 I mean, this principle of protecting children and equal access to public education. I mean, I just,

00:26:34.820 I thought that Democrats cared about that, you know, and they've failed, they've dropped the ball

00:26:41.220 and it just became, um, it was this like unspeakable, horrible thing. You couldn't say it

00:26:46.820 because it contradicted, contradicted what they were doing. And you're right now, Megan,

00:26:51.280 it seems uncontroversial now, but you and I both remember that in the fall of, you know,

00:26:57.060 in both New York and California, if you advocated for open schools, you wanted to kill teachers.

00:27:04.040 You didn't care. You were, you know, you wanted to kill grandma and you wanted to kill 0.98

00:27:08.240 black children. I mean, so the slander was intense, you know, 1.00

00:27:13.000 Well, speaking of that, so I know you were accused of among other things. And I've talked about my,

00:27:17.280 my one friend in New York who her kids, similar to Sam Fran, she, they were New York publics,

00:27:22.300 kept out of school almost the entire school year last year, all fall and virtually all of the

00:27:28.500 spring. And so late spring, when she fed up, she finally went to an open the schools rally

00:27:33.140 and she got called a white supremacist. And it was like, wait, what? That was a head turn. Like,

00:27:37.720 wait, what do you mean? I just, I just want my kids to be in school and your kids to be in school,

00:27:41.040 but they went to the race place, which they did with you too. And I know for a good reason,

00:27:45.260 you found that particularly obnoxious and, and ill-founded. You can explain why.

00:27:51.760 Yeah. And yes. And I, I mean, ours were closed all through the spring of 2021 as well. And I mean,

00:27:59.200 I think they opened a couple of days for kindergarten and, you know, homeless children that were in

00:28:04.340 particularly challenging situations, but it wasn't a meaningful opening, but the accusation of racism,

00:28:09.780 as well as I would say eugenicism, which I also find pub, uh, quite puzzling, um, came early and

00:28:18.680 often, you know, came immediately in the summer of 2020. And it just is absurd. I have four children.

00:28:25.100 I, you know, I don't want to use my children in any way as a shield. Um, but my two older children

00:28:31.000 are mixed race. Um, my first husband, um, is black and those children, you know, are mixed race. And so

00:28:38.880 this notion that I just want to kill black children, which would include my own is just patently 1.00

00:28:44.040 absurd on its face. And so as those accusations came, I just, I, I rejected it. You know, I didn't 0.99

00:28:51.040 even sort of cower in the face of it because it's so patently absurd on its face. Um, and I don't

00:28:56.160 think that I would need to have black children for that to be absurd on its face. You know, 1.00

00:29:00.000 I mean, it's, it's just something that, that makes your case a little bit more unique. I mean,

00:29:04.560 it's, they don't care. Nothing, nothing will inoculate you from charges of racism or bigotry.

00:29:11.160 Really. It doesn't matter which issue you pick to defy the left on. It could be something having

00:29:15.960 absolutely nothing to do with race and they'll hurl that at you to undermine you.

00:29:20.160 So, well, and that's the, that's the point is it just shuts down all conversation because that

00:29:24.960 makes you an unemployable person to be called that and to be accused of that. And so it's supposed

00:29:31.460 to make you just sort of shrink away and, and stop talking because no one wants to be called

00:29:36.200 that. It's a horrible accusation. Um, but I, I reject it on its face.

00:29:41.980 Well, they, they use it so often they've made it less horrible. I mean, that's the irony of their

00:29:45.820 tactic. They've undermined a word that we need to remain strong for good reason. And they're doing

00:29:51.320 their level best to completely water it down and make it meaningless. So what, when you look back,

00:29:56.920 so you, the head of corporate communications came to you, I know that at one point the HR head came

00:30:01.920 to you and the CEO gave you a, like a mild brush back at first, right? Like be careful, something

00:30:08.960 along those lines. Yeah. And I mean, you know, a few had talked to me before him, all my peers,

00:30:16.060 head of legal as well, just reminding me when you talk, you talk on behalf of the company. And I

00:30:21.180 said, but I don't, I'm not, I'm a person, I'm a public school mom. And eventually he did talk to

00:30:28.460 me, you know, it's not something he likes to do, have these unpleasant conversations. He's a very

00:30:33.540 nice person. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, and he's a, he's a, he's a nice person. He doesn't like to

00:30:40.620 have these unpleasant conversations, which I, I understand, but he, he did. And again, it was sort of

00:30:46.560 the same kind of reminder, you know, you're speaking on behalf of the company. I was very

00:30:51.680 careful not to have, you know, my title or the company in any of my bios. So I, it was clear,

00:30:58.300 even if you could easily find that I was the president of Levi's, it was clear that I was

00:31:02.080 not speaking on behalf of Levi's. And at the end of the day, I'm a mom of four first. And if,

00:31:09.900 you know, if it comes to, well, you do speak on behalf of the company when you talk just because

00:31:15.200 of who you are, I pick my kids and I think you have to abandon your children. We're more important.

00:31:21.720 Yeah. I mean, I picked my kids and the kids in this country. It's not just about my kids. It was

00:31:26.140 the kids in San Francisco, the 50,000 public school students who were home, not getting an education.

00:31:33.720 So, you know, I made my choice. I, I knew, I think as I continued to persist and push back and

00:31:39.900 watch my tone. I, you know, I definitely was diplomatic. Um, I think, um, you were not a

00:31:46.580 bomb thrower. I went back, I looked at your tweets and your Laura Ingram appearance. I mean, I'll just

00:31:50.420 give, I'll give folks, uh, uh, an example. This is from a tweet thread that I think was, um, July of

00:31:57.100 2021. And you, you wrote something like, look, um, my, my children, the children need to participate in

00:32:04.480 sports and hug friends and even teachers. They're, they're not required to think of themselves as

00:32:08.440 filthy vectors of disease. Uh, this is when you moved them to Colorado and they participate now

00:32:13.360 in public life. They go to the playground on mass. They're relatively carefree the way four and six

00:32:17.480 year olds should be. Adults protect them, their childhood, not the other way around. In San

00:32:22.820 Francisco, another year of school is threatened. Third school year. Unbelievable. Poor kids suffer the

00:32:28.360 most inequality deepens. Children are stigmatized. This is not out there stuff. And then this line

00:32:34.020 jumped out at me, given everything that's happened. Um, you're talking about how, you know,

00:32:38.160 we, we otherize one another and we don't accept difference. And you say any deviation from the

00:32:43.160 orthodoxy, the mainstream narrative is demonized. You are canceled. And that is eventually what would

00:32:50.900 effectively happen to you, um, months later and for nothing, for nothing other than trying to get

00:32:59.100 the schools open for your kids and others. Yeah. I mean, uh, you could argue when I wrote that I saw

00:33:05.480 the writing on the wall, I guess. Um, and you know, you know, after speaking with the, with the CEO and

00:33:12.060 it is worth noting, Megan, that amidst all of this, I got promoted. I mean, I got promoted in October of

00:33:18.100 2020 to brand president before that I was the chief marketing officer. So there were certainly no issues

00:33:23.480 with my performance. Um, you know, I was rewarded with one of the top three jobs in the company. Um,

00:33:31.880 and as you mentioned earlier, you know, the conversation around CEO became very real at that

00:33:37.520 point, but it was sort of conditional. You need to watch what you say. You can't talk about this

00:33:42.580 anymore. You shouldn't talk about this anymore. And I think I could, I, I couldn't do it. I don't know

00:33:49.220 what to, I don't even know how to describe it. It's like, I can't, the kids are hurting. I just

00:33:54.320 can't. Um, it didn't matter what the cost to me was. And it became clear that there was a high

00:34:00.640 likelihood I would lose my job. I certainly for a year have been very nervous about getting, getting

00:34:06.440 fired. Um, it's such a weird position to go from. I'm either going to be CEO or I'm fired. I'm going to

00:34:14.080 figure out which, and what have I done again? I've stood up for children going to school,

00:34:19.260 something that was mandated and required by the law up until recently. Like it's so important.

00:34:25.460 The law has recognized we must make it happen in normal circumstances.

00:34:29.560 Yeah. I mean, what, what, what happened, I think that really just escalated things for the leadership

00:34:35.840 and the company is I did get, you know, a somewhat larger following and I definitely got some trolls

00:34:41.400 trolls on social media as one does. Um, and you know, with the same sort of stuff, racist,

00:34:48.340 eugenicist, I got some anti-trans. I'm not totally sure where that came from. Just throw another one

00:34:54.260 in there in the, in the mix. Um, and they started tagging my employer and saying boycott Levi's. Now

00:35:00.060 it didn't affect our business. You know, shit happens on social media all the time. You want you, 0.99

00:35:05.400 I'm sure you know this, you swat it away. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Um, and these were largely

00:35:10.860 people that were, you know, very small followings. It wasn't, you know, picking up steam in any way.

00:35:17.660 Um, but outside of social media, some of my, uh, some of the gymnastics fans who liked me for a

00:35:24.440 hot second after athlete day came out, started a petition on Reddit fired, you know, to fire me.

00:35:31.280 And I think they were calling the ethics hotline and then employees were following me on social

00:35:35.460 media and they were upset by it. So they started emailing my boss. And so it just, there was a lot

00:35:40.740 of noise and it can feel bigger, I think than it is. Right. Like, cause when I look back at it all

00:35:48.960 now, I think ignore the social media. It really never got started into anything meaningful and say

00:35:56.020 to the company, you may not agree with her and that's okay. We all have a right to speak up. We use

00:36:01.540 our voice. That's what we advocate for. And there it's done. And I will, you know, I, I do want to

00:36:06.960 note, um, at first that happened, um, you know, chip did stand up for me in a town hall. There was a

00:36:14.920 ton of low back from the Laura Ingram appearance, which I knew would happen. Although I stand by

00:36:20.980 everything I said there. Um, and he did defend me, you know, there were town hall, there was a town hall

00:36:26.760 and there was a lot of criticism and anonymous comments about my racism and anti-science views.

00:36:33.220 And he said, you know, she's standing up for kids in public school and she has a right to say it. And

00:36:38.620 that was sort of the end of any public support. That was definitely the end. Um, and you know,

00:36:46.980 from there, the noise just got, got greater. And I know he was getting emails and I know there were

00:36:51.160 calls to the ethics hotline and it all just, I, I was too much trouble. You know, I was more trouble

00:36:56.000 than I was worth. What did he say when he said to you something like, you know, you, the only thing

00:37:02.660 standing between you and your eventual taking over as CEO is you like this behavior. Yeah. I mean,

00:37:11.060 cause keep in mind, I see this was all sort of escalating in the summer of 21, the conversation

00:37:16.240 I had with him about CEO and that being a possible path for me. That's that happened in the fall of 21.

00:37:23.520 So, you know, there was still, I got a lot of kudos for, you know, for my performance and as a

00:37:30.520 leader, uh, you know, I'm a passionate manager and leader and I care about people and I want people

00:37:36.300 to be able to do the work of their lives that they feel really proud of for a company that they feel

00:37:40.700 proud of. And I worked really hard at that. And he recognized that, um, he recognized it, but was

00:37:48.460 basically saying it's conditional that your next step is conditional on you stopping this. We don't,

00:37:54.680 that's, we don't want it. And I, and meanwhile, you, you read about how your colleagues were out

00:38:00.560 there, you know, a year earlier, constantly defeat Trump. We got to get that nightmare out of there.

00:38:06.060 Like all that advocacy went by with no problem, but you fighting for the children. That's a,

00:38:11.860 that's a job coster. Yeah, that was fine. And I, um, who knows, I'm sure people are digging through

00:38:18.080 all my social media right now to find some terribly unacceptable thing. I've said, uh, I, I did talk

00:38:24.200 about politics and that was always fine. As you mentioned, I was a Warren supporter in the democratic

00:38:30.040 primary, which I would do that differently, but that's fine. We all make mistakes. Um, that was all

00:38:37.260 fine. You know, and I, I posted about the Ahmaud Arbery murder and how horrifying and sad it was.

00:38:44.420 Um, that one really hit me hard. Um, that was all, that was all fine. So once again, you know,

00:38:51.320 this is, you're a lawyer, this is viewpoint discrimination. It's, you know, the argument

00:38:56.080 was, we can't talk about these things that are political or controversial, but we can, it was

00:39:01.180 literally the viewpoint. And I, I think for me, this is so much more than, than Levi's. I mean,

00:39:07.880 you know, my, my career there is over. It's a career I'm very proud of. Um, but this is what's

00:39:13.220 happening in the culture more broadly, as you know, and the company has just sort of caught up

00:39:17.740 in the whirlwind of it. Um, but it's this idea of stifling dissents and, you know, any view outside

00:39:25.160 of whatever the orthodoxy is, whatever the mainstream narrative, or I should say, whatever the quote

00:39:30.840 unquote progressive narrative is, that's unacceptable. And it's so crazy though. It's like, doesn't Levi,

00:39:35.600 you know, back to the Michael Jordan's Republicans buy sneakers to Republicans wear Levi's too. Like

00:39:41.660 what, what are they doing? Right. Right. Why wouldn't they say the country is very divided on

00:39:50.000 this issue and we're, we get it. Okay. So we've got one person taking one side of the rest of our

00:39:56.520 employees are on the other side. Um, that makes us a little bit more balanced than some of these

00:40:01.460 other San Francisco based corporations that, that shows our, our viewer. I mean, our, our wearers in

00:40:06.920 middle America, we're not just some far left company with uniform views on dicey issues.

00:40:12.180 Yeah. And that's a huge part of our fan base. Um, as you can imagine, you know, Levi's is a heritage

00:40:18.780 brand. It's, it's, you know, we've got a lot of more traditional, um, fans probably disproportionately

00:40:25.460 so for a, for a fashion brand essentially. And we have a global consumer base as well. So let's think

00:40:30.880 about that because as you know, and I know schools in Europe were prioritizing, we're open the whole

00:40:35.520 time. So certainly these things are not controversial in European countries where not only were the

00:40:41.360 schools open, but the kids weren't masked. So, you know, it seems so clear. Well, it seemed clear

00:40:48.180 to me all along. I don't know if it's clear to them in hindsight that there was a different way

00:40:52.420 to handle this. I certainly think companies are going to need to think long and hard about how

00:40:57.920 they handle this. It's an age of social media. I don't believe you can ask employees not to be on

00:41:02.680 social media. I don't think you can ask them to sign when they join that they're not going to talk

00:41:07.120 about anything on social media. Who would, who would join a company like that? It's too much a part

00:41:11.160 of our lives. And so how are they going to handle, you know, you have to deal with this issue.

00:41:16.060 What's crazy is it's not like you said something like you got caught up in a controversy, you know, 0.86

00:41:20.860 like you said something dumb or you sent out an ill-advised tweet. It wasn't, it was basically 0.85

00:41:26.000 just this position is unacceptable and ultimately you've got to go. And I want to talk to you about

00:41:33.140 that conversation in, um, in one minute. I'm squeezing a break and we'll come back with Jen's

00:41:38.880 decision to leave the company and the pressure, uh, she got from that boss to do it. Uh, you are

00:41:44.600 listening to the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11, where we appear every

00:41:50.080 weekday at noon East, the full video shows available as well. If you subscribe to our YouTube channel,

00:41:54.700 it's free to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. You get some great clips there too. And if you prefer an

00:42:01.500 audio podcast, go ahead and subscribe and download please on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or

00:42:06.720 wherever you get your podcasts there, you will find our full archives with more than 260 shows.

00:42:18.320 Jen, what did the head of the diversity equity and inclusion group say to you? I had to do,

00:42:25.020 or I was asked to do an apology tour, um, in the spring of 21. And I was told to

00:42:31.500 basically say I'm an imperfect ally, which I, I didn't say I agreed to do it because I thought

00:42:36.580 I'd get fired. Um, but I basically just did what I'd been doing, Megan, which is explain myself and

00:42:41.520 my stance. And, and for a moment that seemed to satisfy, but not for long. So they're still

00:42:47.480 operating under the pretense that you've caused some harm to people of color by your positioning

00:42:52.880 that we need to open the schools, which is a lie. Um, the, the head of HR also came to you.

00:42:59.040 And what did the head of HR say to you? Well, she acknowledged and, and she's been much more

00:43:03.780 sort of on our side of things, I would say than anybody else. And she acknowledged privately that

00:43:09.040 these policies were both classist and racist, but that we still needed to be very careful. We being

00:43:15.740 me as to what we said about it, but I, it was a year and a half at this point. I knew that the

00:43:20.660 writing was on the wall. You got the head of HR saying these policies you're fighting against

00:43:24.940 are racist. You got the head of DEI saying, go out there and basically cop to not being an ally to

00:43:30.340 the black people. And they got the head of the company saying, you're going to be the next CEO. 0.81

00:43:34.920 If only you would just shut up about all this open the schools nonsense. Meanwhile, you won the battle

00:43:39.720 because today is the day of the recall election of the school board in San Francisco. The San

00:43:45.860 Franciscans are getting ready to dump this school board that put these policies in place that you've

00:43:50.460 been fighting against. They're going to do it. That, that recall looks like it's going to go

00:43:54.320 the right way. I think it's extraordinary. So, but, but that's today. It was Sunday you resigned.

00:44:00.360 So did the, did the company, how did they not soften, right? Did the CEO come to you and say,

00:44:05.960 Jen, you got to go? Like what happened? I mean, he basically said, yes, it's all been too much as

00:44:11.320 you'd predicted. There's not a path forward for you. Um, you know, we'll give you the severance.

00:44:16.560 The expectation was I stay for a while till they found my replacement. And I just decided I wanted

00:44:21.160 to leave on my own terms. Were you stunned? I mean, I know you'd been worried about it, but like.

00:44:28.160 I wasn't stunned. I was honestly, I was relieved. It had been, it had been a really difficult two years.

00:44:36.260 I was relieved to have an answer. I just needed to decide how I wanted to make my exit. I wasn't clear.

00:44:41.720 Um, I, I do want to thank Barry Weiss and common sense. Um, you know, I reached out to her, um,

00:44:49.040 and she was willing to publish something that I wrote and I, you know, thought through how I could

00:44:54.300 leave on my own terms. Uh, that was important to me that I leave on my own terms.

00:44:58.960 She's a warrior. She's awesome. And she's another, you know, former liberal. I don't know 0.57

00:45:03.640 actually how she would describe herself today, but she's certainly, you know, closer to being red

00:45:07.380 pill than she shouldn't, than she was four or five years ago over issues like this nonsense,

00:45:12.480 you know, and critical race theory and all of it. Um, that's made her look at the world in a

00:45:17.360 different way, just like you. This is the same CEO who said, you know, derisively that you'd been

00:45:23.340 acting like Donald Trump. He didn't like that. He liked it better when you were openly pro Elizabeth

00:45:27.860 Warren. Um, they didn't like that either. I mean, they didn't dislike it enough to sort of stop me,

00:45:34.340 but obviously businesses were a little bit nervous about Warren. So, so I'm up against a break,

00:45:40.040 Jen, but what, what next, what's it going to be for you? You know, I am super excited. I'm

00:45:45.400 looking forward. I want to write another book, a memoir about, you know, how to kind of screw up

00:45:50.620 your courage and use your voice and how you have to keep re-upping to do that. And I want to,

00:45:54.760 I just opened a, uh, started my own production company. I'm going to make another documentary.

00:45:59.500 Good, good. And, and to those, I mean, you, you wrote it in your piece, but

00:46:03.580 it was final question. Do you think Levi abandoned its values?

00:46:08.880 I do. I do. I think inclusiveness includes all voices and this was not an inclusive approach.

00:46:18.260 They've got some soul searching to do on their end as well. Um, we look forward to your next act

00:46:23.720 and we'll have you back on to promote it too. All the best to you. Thank you, Megan. Nice to meet you.

00:46:28.580 Appreciate it. Up next, the latest legal tactic to keep mask mandates on. 0.93

00:46:33.580 There's a new effort underway now to keep masks on our children. Even after one state Supreme Court

00:46:45.380 ended the school mandate, this is actually happening in state after state, something similar down in

00:46:50.080 Tennessee. And there's more in recent weeks, nearly identical lawsuits have been filed throughout the

00:46:55.040 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania targeting the new mask optional policies in certain school districts.

00:47:03.300 Lawyers accused these districts of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by making masks

00:47:09.040 optional, saying that they are endangering the lives of our most vulnerable children.

00:47:14.940 My next guests have been intimately involved in this fight. I want to introduce you to

00:47:19.040 Jay Chadwick Schnee, who's an attorney who battled the state over school mask mandates and is battling.

00:47:25.700 Jarrett Coleman is a newly elected school board member in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. He's a guy just

00:47:31.140 like you. He's a parent who was ticked off at his three minute time limits and said, I'm going to run

00:47:35.660 for school board. Then you're going to have to listen to me as long as I want to go. And Jamie Walker

00:47:39.760 is a mom from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who's been fighting the school mask mandate from day one. 0.96

00:47:44.900 Chad, Jarrett, Jamie, thank you all so much for being here. Jamie, I want to start with you.

00:47:49.960 You you hated the mask mandates. Same. You did something about it. You in Pennsylvania did something

00:47:57.760 extraordinary last spring when you got the legislature to basically pass a constitutional

00:48:03.480 amendment saying the governor cannot have emergency powers unless we specifically in the legislature give

00:48:10.580 them to him. And so it was great. All right. That's a win. But then, even though his emergency

00:48:16.280 powers had been taken away, we get to August and he issues a mask mandate. So it's like, wait, you don't

00:48:23.960 you don't have the power to do that, sir. You don't have the power to do that anymore. And let's just start

00:48:29.160 there, because that must have been a true moment of elation when you won that particular fight. It was

00:48:35.680 ruled that he did not have the power to institute a mask mandate. Yes, it was. And our school board

00:48:41.920 voted to actually get rid of masks shortly thereafter that. So we assume going into the next school year

00:48:49.140 that we would be mask optional. So this is great because this is an example of the citizenry fighting

00:48:54.980 back and saying, we don't believe you're not a king, you know, to the governor. We like you can't do this

00:49:00.940 to us indefinitely unless you have the support of the voters. This is I mean, voters in New York,

00:49:05.280 voters in Connecticut. We're all feeling this at the moment where it's like nobody voted for these

00:49:09.760 policies. How can they be in place for two plus years? So you guys did something about it. The

00:49:14.500 court says, Governor, you don't have these powers. You can't issue a mask mandate. OK, so great. You

00:49:19.160 have a joyful summer thinking when we go back to school, we're not going to have the masks on.

00:49:22.760 What happened in August? Because I know a lot of machinations took place. What happened?

00:49:27.600 So in August, the way Pennsylvania works is we have 67 counties. Six counties have a local health

00:49:36.020 department that can create their own guidance for schools. So in Bucks County, our health director,

00:49:43.540 Dr. David Damsker, created guidance for schools that said mask optional. So our school district,

00:49:52.580 Central Bucks School District, which is the largest suburban school district in Pennsylvania,

00:49:57.040 decided to go with his guidance that was created on August 15th. We thought everything was going

00:50:03.840 to be his title again. Sorry, what's his title again? He's the director of the Bucks County Health

00:50:09.020 Department. He's a board certified public health doctor, which there's maybe one in this that runs

00:50:15.940 the local health departments. OK, keep going. OK, so we voted our school district voted on July 27th

00:50:24.420 to follow his guidance and to go back to school using a flu model of mitigation, which means you don't

00:50:31.860 have to wear masks. You don't have to quarantine children. School was going to be basically back

00:50:38.140 to normal. The guidance was issued. Well, we voted. Then they issued guidance. And then on August 31st,

00:50:47.820 our health secretary of Pennsylvania, who was an attorney, decided to issue a mask mandate,

00:50:55.420 which was then deemed illegal in the Supreme Court. Unbelievable. So the health secretary,

00:51:01.460 who I understand is basically a shell for the governor, like this person, unlike the guy you

00:51:05.640 just mentioned, is not a doctor. She basically just does what the governor wants her to do. 1.00

00:51:09.140 Well, yes, she was put in place shortly after our last health director got moved to the White House.

00:51:17.460 She she's an attorney. She doesn't have any medical experience. But she had after the illegal 1.00

00:51:22.820 after the mask mandate was found to be illegal, she actually resigned.

00:51:27.640 OK, great. Bye. Don't let the door hit you. OK, so you guys are rolling along and this guy,

00:51:34.000 Dr. David Damsker, he seems like a straight shooter. The guy says, look,

00:51:37.180 I'm in charge of public health here for Bucks County. And this is what I see. And this is an

00:51:41.680 excerpt from what he what he said at the moment. The numbers are low. Serious illness in children

00:51:47.320 is rare. And therefore, we're recommending a mask optional policy and targeted in temporary

00:51:52.480 mitigation. Totally reasonable. He's not saying no masks forever and you can't have masks. And we

00:51:57.960 don't care how high the transmission rate is, which, by the way, would be fine with me because

00:52:01.240 masks do nothing. But anyway, even to the left, this guy's position should be reasonable.

00:52:05.740 Um, but basically what I understand is they essentially peng shuied the guy. He got disappeared

00:52:13.080 for for two plus weeks. And then suddenly the governor's shill, who's a little higher than

00:52:19.420 him on the public health totem pole, handed down a mask mandate for for for how wide was it?

00:52:25.680 Well, they so he Dr. Dansker put out his guidance on August 15. And all of a sudden on August 23,

00:52:35.400 the guidance mysteriously changed. And we never heard from him again. And then on all the schools

00:52:43.960 in Bucks County, we're still not going back to putting masks on kids. So then on August 31,

00:52:50.240 that's when the Allison beam, who is no longer works for the state of Pennsylvania, put the mask

00:52:57.440 mandate in place. Hmm. Okay. And no one has heard from our health director since then.

00:53:02.520 Well, like, do we think he's like been, you know, I was only joking about the peng shui there, 1.00

00:53:07.260 but like, he he's okay, right? How far did they go?

00:53:10.380 Well, he hasn't been able to speak publicly, like he had a pretty good relationship with our school

00:53:16.740 boards. He came to the June school board meeting. And that's what allowed our school board members

00:53:23.820 to vote to get rid of masks, because he spoke at our school board meeting. So in my understanding,

00:53:29.100 he had a really good relationship with many of the school board members, and all of a sudden,

00:53:33.700 no one could have any contact with them again. And then we've put in a lot of right to know requests

00:53:39.800 to find out what actually took place. And you can see our county commissioners and the C, uh,

00:53:47.000 the COO of the county directing all the health advice. So they basically took over the health

00:53:53.140 department, in my opinion. And you can see there's, there's internal correspondence that you guys have

00:53:58.020 gotten in this lawsuit that we're going to talk about in a minute, um, where it makes clear that

00:54:03.400 these superintendents are, you know, Oh, this is an untenable position. You know, the,

00:54:09.220 the parents are split 50, 50 pro mask, anti mask, but we know what's right. We know we have to be

00:54:14.120 pro mask. We want a mandate. If only the governor would give us a mandate. And lo and behold,

00:54:19.160 they did get a mandate. Uh, even though the public had already said no mandates, we passed a whole

00:54:24.300 constitutional amendment so that you couldn't do this to us. So they did it anyway. They did it

00:54:28.340 anyway. I cannot imagine your frustration when they did it anyway. Yes, it was very frustrating

00:54:35.160 because the year before last year, I put my children in this private school that followed

00:54:41.820 the original guidance our health director put out in the summer of 2020 and it allowed for children

00:54:48.320 to not wear masks. So my children didn't have to wear masks in private school and the private school

00:54:55.280 opera. It was totally fine. Nothing happened. So after I wanted to put my kids back into the public

00:55:01.740 schools, because I moved here for the public schools and everything was supposed to be okay.

00:55:07.260 And then they voted to, then the mask mandate came back at the school already started in Bucks

00:55:14.660 County. We were already in school for a week and then they put the mask mandate back in.

00:55:19.800 That's one of the frustrating things about this is that the ones who are so obsessed with the masking

00:55:23.240 refuse to look at the jurisdictions that haven't required masking for honest feedback about whether

00:55:27.980 the masking is doing any good whatsoever, which brings me again, we're going to get to the lawsuits

00:55:32.300 in a second. But that brings me to you, Jarrett. So you're a dad in a different district. And how

00:55:38.960 old are your kids?

00:55:40.500 I have a well, thanks again for for having us on. I really appreciate the opportunity to share our

00:55:45.360 story, which is something that's resonating, you know, with everyone. It's not just unique to us.

00:55:49.080 Everyone's fighting this. My side with three and a half year old son and a one and a half year old

00:55:53.580 daughter who will be going to this school district if they can get their act together. But if they,

00:55:59.080 you know, if they continue to act the way they're doing, I'll be sending my kids other places and I'll

00:56:04.080 be, you know, recommending that others do the same. So you start showing up at the school board meetings

00:56:09.600 as a taxpaying citizen who's got two young kids headed for this district. And what was your frustration

00:56:16.660 when you saw the way these things were being run?

00:56:19.200 Yeah, my frustration was immediately. And before I say anything, I'm supposed to make it very clear

00:56:24.740 to you and to your listeners that everything I say today is only a reflection of my own beliefs and

00:56:29.240 not that of Parkland School District. They're very, well, let's just say that. I think what became

00:56:35.340 clear to me as a taxpayer and as a parent, when you would go to these board meetings and you'd

00:56:39.080 approach the board, your place to air your grievance or your concerns, the board would look at you.

00:56:45.100 They'd apparently hear what you say, but they wouldn't even provide comment. They wouldn't

00:56:49.120 even reply to parents. They just stared at you almost as if they're looking right through you.

00:56:54.600 And so can I tell you the satisfaction that I have been given now where they can no longer look,

00:56:59.680 you know, down and through me. Instead, they're now looking across the stage at me.

00:57:04.020 And now they're forced to hear the community. It's just, it's apparent that these boards have become

00:57:10.020 complete rubber stamps for the administration. And if that's the case, I'm not even really sure why we

00:57:15.320 have a board to begin with. So how many members are on the board? So you decided to run for school

00:57:19.220 board. You got on the school board. So yay. You're newly elected. How long have you been

00:57:23.580 elected and going to the board meetings for? So I was elected in the past fall here in the

00:57:31.320 November election. There were some issues about a challenge in the area. That's another story.

00:57:36.920 And so my seating actually as a board member was delayed, which is just hilarious. But I was finally

00:57:42.820 sat in later in December into January. And so now I'm sitting on the board for about two months.

00:57:49.400 I'm sure your fellow board members are like, how the hell did he get on? Who let, who, why would the

00:57:52.460 voters have put Sarah on?

00:57:52.820 And it's amazing. And Megan, that's the thing. They don't, they don't get it. They're completely like

00:57:57.840 amazed. And it's like, that's the thing that it's, these are not, it's not just like I have these

00:58:02.780 feelings. It's everyone. It's, it's everyone out there has the same thoughts and the numbers show

00:58:08.200 it. When people go to the polls, people are upset with what's going on. They're sick and tired of

00:58:12.460 being gaslighted. And it just continues. And until we take back the boards, flip the balance and retake

00:58:18.280 our schools, this is going to be a struggle everywhere. So how many people are on the board?

00:58:22.400 We have a nine person board. And how many people are on your side?

00:58:26.660 There's, I'm the one on my side. About 9,000 community members, I'd say. Yes.

00:58:33.060 Wow. Okay. So in, in the community, I mean, I, I imagine that the politics are reflected in the

00:58:39.520 community that is majority Democrat, which tends to mean, well, not so much anymore, but, um, sort

00:58:44.120 of far left Democrat, which means pro mask mandate for the most part.

00:58:48.140 Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's a vocal minority that show up with, uh, fears that all the children

00:58:52.780 are going to die from COVID. Um, you know, just, just, they're very vocal and they're against,

00:58:58.580 um, mask optional policies in the area. But, uh, look, I mean, now we know the data that the

00:59:05.700 science doesn't support their argument. It's falling apart now. And yet they still cling

00:59:10.120 out of this fear or this obsession with this virus and, and with these masking policies.

00:59:15.100 Yeah, we've seen it. It's a, you know, we love David Zweig, who's written great pieces for New

00:59:19.580 York magazine. I'm sure you guys have seen him in the Atlantic, taking a hard look at the so-called

00:59:23.940 studies that we, they claim support the masking of children and he's just completely debunked them. 0.99

00:59:30.000 I mean, they're just, it's junk. And the one, the biggest one, which I know, Jarrett, you mentioned

00:59:34.180 when you went off at the school board meeting was by the CDC in Georgia, you know, that showed of 90,000

00:59:40.240 children that the masks do nothing. They do nothing. And the CDC turned around and promptly began

00:59:45.200 ignoring that in favor of these other BS studies that they claim support masks, but in fact do not.

00:59:51.300 So, oh, and by the way, now he, he's getting hit by some left-wing publication that nobody reads.

00:59:56.040 And I choose not to publicize here because they're, they're sad. These, these crazy mask 0.88

01:00:01.460 enthusiasts, again, they're sad that their masks are going away. And so they want to lash out at 0.97

01:00:06.960 anybody who's starting to sort of win this battle, namely the children. It's the children. It's not

01:00:13.140 because of you. It's not because of David Zweig. It's because the children need to have this garment

01:00:18.420 taken off of their damn faces so that they can learn properly. 1.00

01:00:21.980 Right. And I think you bring up a great point. Look, like I'm an airline pilot by trade. I'm 1.00

01:00:25.520 often put into situations where I don't, I may not know the right answer. And I start determining the

01:00:31.760 right answer by making my team bigger and relying on experts. And as we started to, I had doctors in

01:00:36.880 the area sending me these studies showing the, the lack of statistical probability that was

01:00:45.160 significant that these masks, these cloth masks actually do something. And when presented with

01:00:49.860 this data, it just a continual stonewall. Again, look, if, if we're not making the children wear 0.98

01:00:56.080 hospital grade respirators, we're not making them wear N95 masks. We're talking about cloth masks that

01:01:01.300 are not fitted. The N95 masks are not, there's no one from OSHA sitting there fitting these on the

01:01:06.020 children's faces. If the data supported masking, I wouldn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion,

01:01:12.360 but we have to follow the science. It is time that we follow the science and it, and it's about time

01:01:18.480 we move on from this. Okay. So you're sort of fighting it at, at, in the, on the political front,

01:01:23.280 like I'm going to get on that school board. I'm going to try to change policy. And Jamie's a mom

01:01:26.780 who's trying to fight it from the parent level, trying to convince school boards and everybody

01:01:29.840 around her to unmask the children and do what she has to do to move the kids, do whatever you have

01:01:34.420 to do to save the kids. And Chad, you're a lawyer who's been, you know, sort of the legal muscle

01:01:39.700 trying to help out too. All these things are important in the fight. But before we get to the,

01:01:45.000 the ADA lawsuits, which, you know, you're on the opposite side of these, but on the, before we get to

01:01:49.540 that, so we're at the point in the story where we've sort of tried to defang the governor and his

01:01:54.220 ability to just throw emergency powers, you know, by edict, impose masks. Okay. Successful.

01:02:00.140 Then you get the local, uh, you know, health commissioner, at least in Jamie's district to say,

01:02:04.080 we don't need the masks. The case numbers are low, you know, in August masks optional. Okay.

01:02:09.440 And he gets overruled by the state, basically the governor's shill who says, no, we're doing a mandate.

01:02:15.660 Notwithstanding the fact we have no emergency powers, we're doing a mandate. So now we're one step

01:02:18.780 forward, two, two steps back. And then a lawsuit was filed. And Chad, why don't you tell us what

01:02:24.680 the court, uh, was it the Pennsylvania Supreme court that ultimately ruled on this?

01:02:30.440 It was Megan. Um, and just to take a step back for a second over the summer,

01:02:34.480 every school district was making its own independent decisions about, you know, what they

01:02:39.080 wanted to do with respect to masking. And they heard, as you might imagine, loud and clear from

01:02:44.000 parents on both sides of the issues. Um, Thomas Jefferson once said that the government closest

01:02:49.720 to the people serves the people best. And you had independent political subdivisions making

01:02:55.480 decisions about what to do with masking. And the governor came in and said, I don't like those

01:02:59.480 decisions they made. So we're going to issue an edict that required masking in all public and private

01:03:04.940 schools within Pennsylvania. So, um, we brought an action, uh, with, with a number of folks,

01:03:11.580 um, to challenge the governor's authority to issue this, uh, mask mandate, because we believed it was

01:03:17.520 outside the statutory authority put forth in Pennsylvania law and regulations. Um, we argued

01:03:23.820 the case in front of the Commonwealth court, uh, which is a statewide court here in Pennsylvania,

01:03:28.020 won the case. Um, and then it was appealed to the Supreme court and, uh, the Supreme court agreed

01:03:33.700 with our position as well. So, um, that's the highest court in Pennsylvania. And so currently the law of

01:03:38.940 land is that the secretary of health and the governor do not have the ability to issue a mask mandate

01:03:44.900 outside of a disaster declaration. Yes. Because of that constitutional amendment.

01:03:51.440 Correct. Yes. Okay. I mean, it seems very clear that that's the law. And it's funny because I know

01:03:57.000 in your lawsuit, you guys have given us some of the papers you've, you've seen, um, some of the back

01:04:01.420 and forth with the, with the sort of lower public health officials, like, well, we've got to fight.

01:04:06.280 We've got to fight. Oh, well, look, there's this one solicitor in this one jurisdiction who's saying,

01:04:11.500 um, the governor doesn't have these powers, you know, and he's going to come after us. He's going

01:04:15.760 to say if the governor issues a mask mandate, you know, it's never going to be upheld that it's

01:04:19.320 unlawful. How can we get rid of that guy? No, no, no. He was right. That guy was right. There's

01:04:24.020 no power anymore for the governor to do this or his emissaries. And the mask mandate is no longer

01:04:29.700 constitutional in this, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, because the Supreme court has said

01:04:33.440 it was unlawfully issued. That's the state of the law right now. So never to be silenced.

01:04:43.000 Those who love the masks are now choosing a different tactic. And my years practicing law

01:04:48.800 tell me it is indeed a tactic. Perhaps there's a child or two or a few who are genuinely immunocompromised

01:04:54.840 who have concerned parents, but it's too coordinated right now, Chad, for me to believe

01:04:59.300 that these a thousand plus students they're claiming are immunocompromised and lawsuit after

01:05:05.260 lawsuit in jurisdiction after jurisdiction are popping up claiming unless the mask mandate is in

01:05:10.980 place where everyone is forced to wear one, these kids are in danger of dying. And therefore,

01:05:17.560 under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the districts have no choice but to reimpose mask

01:05:25.240 mandates and keep them in place indefinitely. Is that where we are?

01:05:31.080 Right. I think you're right. And just on the prior litigation really quickly,

01:05:37.000 one of my greatest badges of honor was that the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story that said,

01:05:42.360 called my lawsuit, my challenge to the governor's authority, innovative, but ultimately probably not

01:05:46.800 likely to succeed. I'm glad we proved them wrong. But with respect to the current state of the law,

01:05:52.700 you're right that you have parents out there now, they're proceeding anonymously, so we don't even

01:05:58.980 know who they are. And they're suing individual school districts arguing that my immunocompromised

01:06:05.460 child cannot receive or attend school in person unless everyone is required to wear a mask. That is

01:06:13.280 the reasonable accommodation that they're seeking. And that's just to make that clear, just to make that

01:06:17.920 clear. So the Americans with Disabilities Act requires schools and or employers, but it requires

01:06:23.960 them to make a, quote, reasonable accommodation for somebody's disability. So that's why we have

01:06:28.880 handicap ramps, for example. You can't have a school where the kids cannot get in. Now, does it require

01:06:34.700 that every single facility in the entire school be handicap accessible? Not necessarily. It has to be 0.99

01:06:41.580 something that the law would deem reasonable, that the reasonable person would say, yeah, that makes

01:06:45.800 sense. And so they're trying to use that to say what's reasonable here. The only thing they say

01:06:51.760 that's reasonable is a mandate that every single person in the building be masked.

01:06:58.300 That's absolutely right. And that really is kind of the heart of where these cases are right now. So

01:07:04.180 for example, in Upper St. Clair in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh, they made the argument that, hey,

01:07:10.720 we've installed HEPA filtration systems. We have the plexiglass. We have the hand sanitizing. We have

01:07:17.020 all the other mitigation measures out there except for masking. And the federal district court out there

01:07:23.140 said we have virtual school. And the federal district court out there said, well, we agree.

01:07:27.960 This is not, you don't have to require universal masking as a reasonable accommodation. But by contrast,

01:07:33.960 you have the North Allegheny School District that said, well, your reasonable accommodation is you can just

01:07:38.560 be remote learning. And the district court there, again, both in the Western District of Pennsylvania

01:07:44.280 said that that you needed to require universal masking as a reasonable accommodation.

01:07:49.940 That's that's like that's crazy. I mean, the thought that every child in the in the school

01:07:55.340 has to be masked in order to accommodate anonymous plaintiffs who claim they their children will be

01:08:04.340 severely injured or die if if that's not the outcome. And I this jumped out at me out of one

01:08:09.960 of the complaints. All the complaints are identical. It's clearly orchestrated. But one of them alleges

01:08:14.640 when parents permit their children to opt out of mask wearing, medically fragile children with 1.00

01:08:20.480 disabilities and indeed all children are subjected to serious illness or even death as a result of COVID-19

01:08:27.740 being spread through unmasked breathing, coughing and sneezing. There's so much wrong with that

01:08:34.360 allegation. But the first thing that jumped out at me, Chad, was, are we really going to pretend

01:08:39.520 that these two cent cloth masks that the kids don't wear properly, that are as thin as paper,

01:08:47.240 are all that standing between these thousand plus children in Pennsylvania and death? And if that's true,

01:08:54.860 what kind of irresponsible parent would have sent that immunocompromised child to school ever one 1.00

01:09:01.100 day prior to today? Yeah, I would agree, too. And the other the other thing to look at is the

01:09:07.320 plaintiffs. While they're anonymous, they do list their medical conditions. One of the plaintiffs in the

01:09:12.920 North Allegheny case, their disability is ADHD. That doesn't really seem to have anything to do with

01:09:20.860 masking or why my my fellow peers or classmates should have to wear a mask. But you're absolutely

01:09:27.540 right. I mean, I think the the ultimate question is there hasn't been any hearing that I'm aware of

01:09:31.900 in the United States about the efficacy of a cloth mask. And I think it's about time that a judge

01:09:38.600 schedules a hearing and takes evidence and has testimony about whether these cloth masks actually

01:09:44.180 work. Is the mantra that my mask protects you and your mask protects me? Is that actually correct?

01:09:49.900 It certainly is is not in today's day and age. And we know that from Omicron. And that's one of the

01:09:55.500 questions I have for you, which is how how does that change? You know, the dynamic right now,

01:10:00.160 since we know it's incredibly spreadable with or without the mask, with or without the vaccine.

01:10:06.580 And so does that change the positioning in this case? We're going to pick it up there. And I'm

01:10:10.800 after this, I'd love to ask you some of the hardest questions. Like I'm going to I'm going to

01:10:14.500 deal man the other side's position and see if you think, you know, it holds water, right? Because

01:10:20.560 that's a that's a better debate than just all of us agreeing. You know, Jamie, let me just go back

01:10:29.540 to you for one second, because the sort of place we got here that got us here is frustrated parents,

01:10:35.660 right? Frustrated parents who are seeing what's happening to the children. And Pennsylvania being a

01:10:39.380 purple state. It's you know, it's gone blue, more recently, but it's pretty purple in terms of its

01:10:44.720 makeup. What would you say the divide is in terms of pro mask mandate anti? I think in the beginning,

01:10:50.900 when the last school year, it was 50 50. But going into this next school year, that was the one we're

01:10:57.840 in now, most people did not want masks. They wanted their kids to get back to normal. Because when they

01:11:03.400 dropped the mask mandate, the end of June, I think it took one or two days. And basically,

01:11:08.800 all the kids were not wearing masks. And do you talk to like, I don't know what your politics are,

01:11:14.620 but do you talk to more left leaning friends? And where are they on it?

01:11:19.100 So a lot of my left leaning friends, I feel like I don't talk to that much anymore.

01:11:23.660 When this all started, I made some new friends. Yeah.

01:11:28.040 Yes, you made new friends. This is happening. Oh, my God, this is like a big story, I think,

01:11:31.260 in the COVID weirdness, just like the end of friendships, but also the beginning of new friendships.

01:11:36.560 Yes, I joined a Facebook group back in May of 2020 called reopenbucks.com. And we all just became

01:11:44.040 really close. And we kind of fought this together. We put in a lot of right to know requests, we spoke

01:11:52.520 at board meetings, we just we put a lot of timelines together to help figure out what took place in our

01:12:01.740 county and how we got to where we are. It's been so such a legal zigzag. I mean, you must be getting

01:12:08.120 legal whiplash out there like victories. No, they're gone. More victories. No, they're gone.

01:12:13.340 And it's not just Pennsylvania. As I said, I've got a lot of viewers and listeners who've been writing

01:12:17.660 into me about something similar happening in Tennessee, where they're just at their wits end

01:12:22.340 down. There are similar situations, people now using the ADA Americans with Disabilities Act

01:12:27.000 to try to undo court orders and and other measures supported by the citizenry to take the masks off.

01:12:34.320 So they're, you know, trying to snatch away the victory after it's already clearly been handed down.

01:12:40.800 All right. Now, Chad, I want to ask you this about the lawsuit. So this is this is I when I mentioned

01:12:46.000 1000 alleged students with who are disabled. That's just one district. I mean, you know,

01:12:50.780 according to these lawsuits, you're going to have thousands and thousands of disabled children all

01:12:55.140 across Pennsylvania who could die if they go to school without the other kids wearing this mask.

01:13:00.360 And nobody in Pennsylvania is even proposing the N95 masks like they do in L.A. So it's like 0.92

01:13:05.360 it's always going to be the tiny little piece of paper in front of the kid's face,

01:13:09.640 not properly worn. You know, like, again, if you're a parent who actually thinks your child might die,

01:13:14.840 if the other kids aren't perfectly masked, you really shouldn't be sending your child to school.

01:13:18.120 That is that actually is crazy to do. If my kid actually might face death, if another kid didn't

01:13:23.100 have a good mask on, he would not be going to public school. It'd be sad, but it wouldn't be

01:13:26.780 happening. OK, so here's what they argue in part, Chad. They say.

01:13:33.380 Every step necessary should be followed to prevent the spread of covid, which requires universal masking.

01:13:41.700 They're saying it is a necessary step and that in order to prevent the spread,

01:13:47.740 it requires universal masking and that anything less would not be reasonable. Right. So how do you

01:13:56.080 come out attacking that? Well, I think the reason why the CDC guidance is called guidance is because

01:14:03.540 it's not an order. It's not a mandate. It's not a statute. It's not a regulation. It is not binding on

01:14:08.260 any school district or any other entity, for that matter. You know, the problem is that there are

01:14:14.680 a host of different mitigation efforts that can be done and have been done by school districts out

01:14:19.760 there to help stop the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and and prevent the infections of covid-19.

01:14:27.700 It cannot be the only reasonable accommodation out there because there are other things that have done.

01:14:32.960 And the other aspect, too, is, you know, you can take the same legal argument that is being made in

01:14:38.540 these cases and apply them for students that have a hearing disability or perhaps a speech pathology

01:14:44.280 issue where they need to see lips in order to understand speech and help articulate speech sounds.

01:14:51.280 And you can make the argument that their reasonable accommodation is instead that no one should be allowed

01:14:57.720 to wear masks. No peers and no teachers should be allowed to wear masks, because otherwise,

01:15:02.000 these students with hearing disabilities and speech pathology issues cannot see the lips of their

01:15:07.680 fellow students and teachers. Would the law recognize that the risk on the one hand is alleged

01:15:13.540 death or severe illness versus the risk on your hand being difficulty understanding or being

01:15:22.080 understood? Right. Is it will it weigh the relative risks in figuring out what's reasonable?

01:15:27.160 Well, there hasn't yet been a dueling lawsuit where we're both have happened in the same school

01:15:32.680 district. So I do think there are different harms being alleged. I will note that actually with with

01:15:38.480 Jamie and the Central Park School District, there was a federal lawsuit that was filed along the same

01:15:44.940 lines that we're seeing here today. And the judge, after about three months of litigation, said,

01:15:50.520 you know what? All the harms that are being alleged here by the plaintiffs,

01:15:53.980 none of it has happened in the three months this litigation has gone on. And I think that's very

01:15:58.480 much what's going to happen with these as well. Mm hmm. OK, so so they not only do they have the CDC

01:16:04.880 on their side, but they have the American Academy of Pediatrics, which all along has been advocating

01:16:10.760 the most severe COVID restrictions. And here as well is saying continues to say the children should remain

01:16:17.720 masked. To me, it's it's stomach turning. I have to be honest. I just feel like they've totally

01:16:22.960 abandoned their their duty, their duty to children to see to look at health, the true health of

01:16:28.680 children. They they're like the teachers union, you know, like a group of people, professionals who

01:16:32.800 their main goal ought to be the well-being of children. And yet everything you hear from the

01:16:37.640 American Academies of Pediatrics could have come out of Joe Biden's mouth. It seems politically

01:16:42.480 bent. OK, sorry. That was my own take. I'm trying to steal man, not straw man. But you do have the

01:16:47.040 the you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics against you. So how persuasive do you think the

01:16:52.040 judge is likely to find that? Well, the American Academy of Pediatrics is really just involved as

01:16:58.540 an amicus in a lot of these cases that they're brave that position that really goes to the efficacy

01:17:03.540 of masking versus whether it is a reasonable accommodation or not. So, you know, perhaps the

01:17:10.600 judge, I'm sure some judges would be more influenced than others and we'll have to see how that goes.

01:17:15.760 But I think the important thing is that, you know, you have the availability of these N95s and other

01:17:22.100 things that a student who truly is immunocompromised can wear an N95 to help protect themselves.

01:17:28.600 They can choose to do remote online learning if they're significantly scared about the possibility

01:17:34.920 of obtaining COVID-19. OK, but this is where this is an interesting tactic by them.

01:17:40.480 And it's actually a good one. They use our side's argument against us saying you you've made the

01:17:48.600 argument that remote learning is awful for the past two years. And finally, we now agree. Now we agree

01:17:55.220 with you. Remote learning does nothing and it's not equal. And so that is not a reasonable accommodation

01:18:00.860 for these children. Not only that, but their argument goes a step further and says that if you require

01:18:07.860 students with disabilities to work remotely for their schooling, that is a form of segregation.

01:18:14.740 And so therefore, you are segregating disabled students, which really denies them the ability

01:18:20.880 to have learning in the least restrictive environment out there. But I think what really the essential

01:18:26.400 component of these cases is that they're really questioning the denial of a free and appropriate

01:18:32.160 public education under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, not under the ADA and the

01:18:38.240 Rehabilitation Act, as they're arguing. Why that's important is because there are exhaustion requirements

01:18:44.040 for the IDEA. So you have to exhaust your administrative remedies first before you can run into court to try

01:18:50.320 to get a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. And they've kind of artfully worded and

01:18:55.100 crafted these complaints in order to avoid that exhaustion requirement.

01:19:00.280 What would that require? What would they have to do?

01:19:02.480 They have to interact with the school. They have to set forth what the disabilities are. They have to

01:19:07.500 seek a reasonable accommodation. There has to be an interactive process, just like there kind of

01:19:12.160 is under the ADA with respect to an employee-employer situation.

01:19:17.480 All right. Well, let me ask you now, like, Jared, if they do have to interact with the school,

01:19:23.740 right, and then somebody comes to you and says, I don't know, you can take the ADHD pretty easily and say,

01:19:28.260 no, no, we don't recognize that as a comorbidity of COVID. But let's say, you know, you've got a kid

01:19:34.820 who's got really bad asthma and actually does face a serious increased risk from COVID. What do you do

01:19:41.080 about that? Like, what what do you think as a school board member now you would you would do with that

01:19:45.060 kid? I think I've said this before, I think that to these, you know, to these concerned, concerned

01:19:51.320 parents, like, and I've said this before, you know, I urge you to remind you that the CDC has strict

01:19:56.140 guidance outlining, you know, what you should do at your home to protect these individuals. You know,

01:20:01.040 you need to do everything that the CDC requires then, you know, if you're at a higher risk for

01:20:06.060 severe illness from COVID, this was from their website that you should get a COVID vaccine, you

01:20:10.200 should limit contact with others, and people as much as possible. In fact, they're even telling

01:20:14.420 you so what you're limiting by the CDC basically say you maybe should consider remote learning,

01:20:18.900 like, wash your hands as often as possible, avoid close contact six feet with others outside

01:20:23.340 your household, clean and disinfect frequently touch services, and avoid all unnecessary, you

01:20:28.780 know, travel. These are per the CDC recommended guidelines of what you can do to protect those

01:20:32.620 who are at higher risk of contracting the virus. And, and it's not a common, it's not a pleasant

01:20:37.300 discussion to have. But I think we have to start thinking what, what is the acute damage for some

01:20:42.040 children to be out of school versus the large impact of damaging 10,000 children per district?

01:20:48.900 And what we're doing? I mean, to put this into perspective, Megan, I heard from a parent the

01:20:53.040 other day, their child's in second grade, to this, their whole career in school over these past two

01:20:58.200 years, they don't know what the faces of their classmates look like. That's me. So that's my

01:21:03.100 second grader, too. You don't have a heart. And we need to, we need to wake up about that. I mean,

01:21:08.940 I tell you, you have to do everything the CDC requires. And exactly as you said, Megan,

01:21:12.500 if you really trust that cloth mask to protect your child, that I mean, I just, I don't know,

01:21:19.080 I think you have some reevaluation to do. But that's just my opinion.

01:21:22.220 Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, it's, yeah, go ahead.

01:21:26.060 And I would just say, there's, there's something a bit insidious here, too, that not many people want

01:21:30.740 to speak about. But all of these committees and, and agencies that are making these decisions,

01:21:37.220 they don't operate in the sunshine, largely as required that I would think by the sunshine law,

01:21:42.400 or the sunshine act in Pennsylvania, for example, in certain districts, we have a health and safety

01:21:46.680 committee made up of doctors and teachers and principals. And they hold meetings where they then

01:21:52.700 the result of these meetings is official recommendations and advice on official agency

01:21:58.640 business that the board then votes on. But even as a board director, I can't find out what they spoke

01:22:03.940 about and who these individuals were, which doctors they were. And so we want to, you know,

01:22:09.380 we don't unmask the kids, we also have to unmask the government here. And we need to they need to be

01:22:13.180 transparent with what they're doing. Well said. So, Chad, one of the things that's annoying about

01:22:17.500 the them filing lawsuits as john and Jane does and child does is, it's very difficult to find out

01:22:23.440 exactly what we're dealing with here. Because one of the things I question when they're saying

01:22:28.080 everyone has to be master, my child could die is, are these children in a hermetically sealed

01:22:33.400 compartment when they're not at school? Do they have any activities outside of the school

01:22:37.840 settings? That would be one of the very first things I imagine you as a as the lawyer would

01:22:42.540 hire a PI and start looking into and you issue a discovery request saying, let's see all activities

01:22:48.820 that little juniors involved in and risks that you've been taking even prior to COVID because

01:22:53.700 there's there's pneumonia and there's common colds and there's flu and there's all sorts of

01:22:57.560 things that go through the air. So right now, at least you're hampered in defense

01:23:02.680 because of that. Right. And in North Allegheny, for example, there's a population of about 50,000

01:23:09.920 people there. And this lawsuit's brought by three people, which is kind of breathtaking.

01:23:16.240 And, you know, I think you're right. You know, there there's really no proximate cause here,

01:23:20.800 you know, not to throw too much legal out there. But the how do you make the connection that someone

01:23:25.920 could contract it at school instead of the grocery store, the mall, the movie theater?

01:23:29.780 Um, you know, those in Pennsylvania, all those facilities are open and you do not have to wear

01:23:34.760 a mask in any of them. Certainly can choose to, but you don't have to. Right. So you're going to

01:23:39.100 keep the kid. Does your kid ever go with you, mom, when you go to the grocery store? Do you let him go,

01:23:44.120 you know, out to a public park? Do you let him like, what do you let him do? Um, because you cannot make

01:23:49.380 the entire society wear masks forever because of your child's vulnerability. I was just talking to my

01:23:55.540 friend. She, she's a doctor. She was telling me her child has a very bad dairy allergy. He could

01:24:00.720 actually die if he has dairy. Does she require, does she go into our school and say you can't serve 1.00

01:24:06.080 any dairy? She doesn't. She's educated her child. She's educated the child's teachers and the faculty

01:24:11.880 that they understand, you know, what needs to be done to keep this child safe. You got to make sure

01:24:15.740 if a snack comes into the classroom that it doesn't have dairy. You got to remind the other parents,

01:24:19.880 like if you send something in, just know that there's one kid who can't have it. Fine. I think

01:24:24.960 reasonable parents in a, in a community are willing to do that for another family. Like I don't have to

01:24:29.960 send in the snack with, with dairy, or I'm happy to send one that, that doesn't have the dairy,

01:24:34.320 right? Like normal parents in a community together, we'll do that for one another. But Chad, the, the,

01:24:39.320 the thing that the administrators are going to come back with is we don't have peanuts in a lot of

01:24:45.120 schools right now. And that is not because we have thousands of kids with peanut allergies. It's

01:24:49.640 because we have a few and it's so potentially lethal to them that we've decided to live a

01:24:54.180 different way. And, you know, your opponents are going to say, this is that case.

01:24:58.920 Right. Well, I do like to say that, you know, one of the greatest victims of COVID-19 has been

01:25:03.300 common sense. Um, you know, the, that argument about the peanut allergy really kind of assumes that

01:25:08.740 everyone is a transmitter and, and, and, and has COVID-19 and it's just walking around infecting

01:25:14.200 everyone. In the peanut allergy case, um, you have people that have peanut allergies and there

01:25:19.580 is a reasonable accommodation provided for them. But here you can't just assume that everyone has

01:25:24.060 COVID-19 and as a carrier, you know, it didn't work during the, you know, that would be a problem

01:25:28.980 during the AIDS epidemic. For example, we can't just assume everyone has a disease, um, and treat

01:25:34.300 them accordingly. And the one way masking, I mean, we're hearing more and more about that, Jamie,

01:25:39.440 like why, why isn't there more emphasis on the effectiveness of N95 masks versus cloth masks

01:25:47.880 for those who are immunocompromised? Yeah, that's what I think the immunocompromised children should 1.00

01:25:56.560 do is wear the N95 masks. If they, if the CDC is saying those are the masks that work, I don't know

01:26:03.980 why there's no studies on this or why they're not suggesting this. Because the thing is, I mean,

01:26:11.700 Jared, I'll put this one to you. If we accept the premise that everyone must be masked in order to,

01:26:16.620 you know, protect these unnamed, unidentified children, um, it could go on forever. How, how long

01:26:22.380 is that? It could be all the way through 12th grade. What, who's to say? I mean, we don't know how

01:26:27.080 prevalent COVID is going to be the next variant. Now we, one of the goals was hopefully to get it down to

01:26:32.160 the point where it would more resemble the common cold than a killer virus. And Omicron for the

01:26:38.020 young certainly did that. But I mean, if you take into its extreme, you know, if you just look at

01:26:44.100 case numbers, we don't know. Case numbers could go back up. They could stay back up. Maybe it's very

01:26:47.740 mild, but not for certain children. Why not straight through all the way through masks forever?

01:26:53.140 Right. And if you really wanted to, yes. Uh, and if you really wanted to be impartial and just look at

01:26:57.560 the data, it's a fluid situation when the science tells us to go mask optional, we go mask optional.

01:27:03.380 If there was a huge uptake in cases and the, and it was spreading everywhere. And, and, and when you

01:27:08.240 talk about like the peanut allergy with, with Chad, and we start to talk about, well, the mortality rate,

01:27:12.380 well, let's, we have the data on the mortality rate for children with COVID. Um, we, we know this.

01:27:17.420 So why aren't we actually looking at that data? It, you know, if we don't put an end to it now,

01:27:21.980 it will never end. What we should be doing is saying COVID right now has calmed down. We don't know

01:27:26.500 what the future holds. That's fine. We need to show that we can, you know, independently and

01:27:30.460 on an objectively look at data, make a change to our masking. And if we're in another situation at

01:27:35.440 a different time and the data change, maybe we move back into masking, but maybe we use masks that

01:27:40.160 are actually effective. And, and just something that I think is interesting. I'm often, you know,

01:27:44.580 really attacked on this at the school board by people in the community that say it's, it's your

01:27:49.740 obsession with choice over responsibility. And to them, I say, you know, you, you have the right

01:27:56.840 words. They're just in the wrong order for us. We have the responsibility to ensure choice for our

01:28:02.240 children over your obsession with this virus. I also think, I'm sorry. You can also look at it in

01:28:08.920 Pennsylvania at central Buck school district. We are the largest suburban school district.

01:28:13.980 We are mask optional and everything is fine. I don't know why there's not more emphasis on

01:28:20.400 Bucks County. We have over 75% of our children are mask optional in the County of Bucks. Most of the

01:28:28.000 kids are three quarters of our children are mask optional. And the County right next to us, Montgomery

01:28:33.460 County, one of the ADA lawsuits was filed. That's 25 minutes from my house. Why don't they,

01:28:40.940 why didn't the judge say what's going on in Bucks County? It's working. The children don't have to

01:28:46.740 wear masks. Yeah. That's why they don't emphasize it because it's working. If it weren't working,

01:28:51.260 you'd hear a lot more about it from the media and everyone else following this. So Chad,

01:28:55.020 less, less piece of this. So they write in there in, in this, you know, one example lawsuit,

01:28:59.740 uh, the necessity for masking is greater now than ever. Okay. Um, and that the schools have an

01:29:08.120 obligation to ensure the safety of the students, your response to that.

01:29:14.200 Yeah, I think there was a time at the very beginning of this when we were dealing with a

01:29:18.300 lot of unknowns and everything was very fluid and changing on a day-to-day basis that masking

01:29:23.960 may have been an important thing to consider at that point. Um, but now we've lived with COVID for,

01:29:29.340 uh, two years. It's been, I think almost the two year anniversary of two weeks to stop the spread

01:29:34.780 or to slow the flatten the curve. Right. Um, you know, I think, um, we're in a position where

01:29:40.860 the numbers are going down and, um, it's, it's not spreading in the school. Like,

01:29:46.620 like everyone fears it will. I know you've had a split in decisions out in Pennsylvania.

01:29:51.680 Some courts have gone one way, some courts have gone the other. So it'll go up and get decided

01:29:55.220 probably by the third circuit court of appeals that'll affect everybody in the state. And we're

01:30:00.860 seeing it bubble up, uh, you know, here, there, and everywhere. This actually could wind up in

01:30:05.280 the U S Supreme court potentially. Um, and so it's a good thing that we have a little bit more of a

01:30:10.180 conservative bent at right now. Although I don't know on masking, uh, I'm just not sure about the

01:30:15.860 Supreme court. It's full of a bunch of old people just saying like they're, they seemed pretty cautious 1.00

01:30:22.580 and, um, we'll have to wait and see how it plays out, but good luck, Chad. I appreciate it.

01:30:27.620 Jarrett you as well. And Jamie, thanks for fighting the good fight.

01:30:30.860 Thank you. Thank you. Tomorrow, a fascinating thinker and bestselling author,

01:30:35.740 Arthur Brooks is going to be here. He's talking about his new book on finding happiness, success,

01:30:41.980 and purpose. Wouldn't you like to have those three things in your life? Well, you will,

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The Megyn Kelly Show - February 15, 2022

Top Exec Resigns and Turns Down $1 Million to Speak Freely on COVID Hypocrisy, with Jennifer Sey ｜ Ep. 262

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