The Lehighton Area School District board member facing a court petition to remove him from office fired back recently, with his attorney arguing the case is legally baseless.

David F. Bradley Sr., through his attorney J. Chadwick Schnee of Schnee Legal Services LLC in Lititz, filed an answer, new matter and counterclaim on July 14 in Carbon County’s Court of Common Pleas, two weeks after 20 residents petitioned for his removal.

In the legal filing, Schnee argues that the district — not his client — is responsible for any privacy breach, and that the entire action amounts to an unconstitutional attempt to punish a public official for exercising his First Amendment rights. Bradley is also seeking attorney fees from the petitioners.

Civil complaint

The original petition, filed on July 1 by 20 district residents represented by Arley Kemmerer and Matthew Mottola of the Kemmerer Law Firm in Jim Thorpe, accused Bradley of publicly posting more than 100,000 pages of district records — including student social security numbers, medical information and educational files — to a publicly searchable website without ensuring confidential information had been removed. An additional 185 community members signed a separate petition supporting the removal effort.

Bradley was appointed to the board in November 2025 to fill a vacancy and was censured by the board in May 2026. His term runs through December 2027.

Response

The response takes direct aim at the legal foundation of the removal effort. The petition, Schnee wrote, “fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Section 318 of the School Code,” because that statute permits removal only for nonfeasance — the failure to perform a mandatory duty — not for malfeasance or misfeasance.

The response cites a 1945 Pennsylvania case establishing that a director “is removable not for doing evil things in office, but for not functioning as a director in respect to his mandatory duties.”

Bradley’s filing contends that every allegation in the petition — that he requested records, received records and posted records to a website — describes affirmative conduct that cannot, as a matter of law, constitute nonfeasance.

Beyond the legal theory, the response directly challenges the petitioners’ account of what happened and who is to blame. Bradley’s filing admits he posted district records to his website but states that when he “discovered that the district had not fully redacted the records at issue pursuant to the agreement between he and the district, he immediately took remedial action to remove the records from being publicly accessible as a result of the district’s negligence.”

The response specifically denies that Bradley “knew that the district, despite his agreement that the district could redact Social Security numbers, FERPA-protected information, and other sensitive information, apparently released certain confidential information to (Bradley)that was not redacted.” His filing further states that “it was later discovered that the district did not remove all Social Security numbers and other information that (Bradley) agreed should be redacted by the district.”

The records in question were obtained through years of Right-to-Know litigation. Bradley’s response admits he filed the original request as a private citizen — years before he was appointed to the board — and that “the records were produced and provided to him in his personal capacity as a member of the public who filed a request under the RTKL, rather than as a school board director.” The Office of Open Records ultimately held the records were public and the district did not appeal that decision.