"We felt like she was our guest, and we complied with her request," recalls Deer Park superintendent David Hicks. "[Maxwell] considered it to be an open meeting in the same way as a school board meeting, which can be videotaped." Maxwell reportedly stormed out of the meeting when he was prevented from taping it, then stormed back in court with a $1.2 million suit against the school district, Allred and others.
The suit was only the latest shot in a series of meetings and angry letters being fired from all fronts over Positive Action. One especially revealing exchange occurred when Sherri Vaughn, the executive secretary for the Deer Park school district, wrote to the Deer Park Broadcaster in November 1991, arguing in favor of the program and observing that "the recent attack on this program and the sensationalism surrounding this controversy frighteningly resembles the Salem witch hunts and McCarthyism." Half a year later, Maxwell wrote to Vaughn: "With 'Christians' like you, Sherri, Satan can send fewer demons to Deer Park to do his dirty work .... I rebuke you and all you have done to stop me and BAFA .... You will be exposed ...."
The suit languished until early this year, when the Deer Park district settled with Maxwell. "Our school board was very reluctant to settle this," Hicks says, "because we felt we were in our legal rights in this situation, and ultimately we would prevail." But the settlement was so reasonable, Hicks adds, "that if we didn't take it, our insurance company would no longer be able to cover us." Deer Park ISD's insurance carrier paid $15,000 to settle with Maxwell and another $27,000 for the district's legal expenses.
Maxwell offered to drop his suit against the Leader for a settlement of a few thousand dollars in July, but Flickinger said no.
"It's a matter of principle," she said. "If I had the money I wouldn't want to settle. The next thing we knew, we got [the lien] in the mail."
Planned Parenthood and the Leader were provided pro bono legal representation, that is, for free. "Had we not friends like that, we'd have been in trouble," Flickinger says. "We'd have had to settle." Planned Parenthood may have been spared monetary expense as well, but the freebies are precious: "There are only so many times you can ask lawyers to work for free," says Elena Marks. The suits "cost us time and resources in litigation."
"Most nonprofits don't have the resources to fight any kind of protracted legal battle," observes Cecile Richards, executive director of the Texas Freedom Alliance, which monitors the activities of the far right and its many national legal foundations gaining influence across the country. "Those folks operating at lower ends of financial security won't do anything if they think the far right will take them on. It's very frightening to see in school districts."
Maxwell, on the other hand, generally serves as his own counsel, and when he does have representation, he calls upon a loyal army of volunteers to help foot the bill. Cagle describes him as one of the best pro se litigants he's seen. He may have to be.
"My gut is no lawyer would come within 1,000 feet of this guy," says Elena Marks.
By that, Marks means that lawyers can get themselves in trouble by filing frivolous lawsuits. One of the new "tort reform" laws effective this month makes it easier to quickly establish whether a case is frivolous and to impose sanctions on parties bringing such pleadings to court.
Larry Maxwell didn't respond to requests to be interviewed for this story, which was not surprising, given that his relations with the media appear to be about as cordial as his relations with local school boards.
In addition to his litigation against the Leader, Maxwell was once asked to leave the Pasadena Citizen's newsroom after arguing with the editor over the paper's refusal to publish a retraction Maxwell had prepared for an article about him. Then there was the time Maxwell passed around a cut-and-pasted version of a local reporter's story about him -- perhaps untwisting whatever he perceived to be twisted there? -- and later was confronted by the reporter. She forgave him for what he had done. He pointed a finger at her and exclaimed, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
After getting no response to the several calls we had placed to Maxwell and the two visits we made to his home, we faxed him a polite inquiry about what documentation the Bay Area Family Association, as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, might be required to file with the IRS and make available for public inspection. That brought the Press its first and only direct contact with Larry Maxwell, who phoned to say that his organization was not required to file the documentation we were inquiring about. And then, Larry Maxwell ended that one and only contact by assuring us, in a gruff and most unfriendly voice, "If you call my office again, we will consider it an act of harassment, and you'll be hearing from me again.
