A Carbon County judge heard roughly 90 minutes of argument Monday over whether Lehighton Area School Director David F. Bradley Sr. can be stripped of his seat for posting more than 100,000 pages of district records on a publicly searchable website.

Twenty residents and taxpayers filed the petition July 2 through the Kemmerer Law Firm, P.C., of Jim Thorpe. They argue Bradley failed to screen the records for confidential student and employee information before publishing them.

The petition says members of the public learned May 13 that the posted records included full Social Security numbers, employee and student health records and information showing a district student had been committed for inpatient mental health treatment. Bradley removed the records nine hours after the district notified him, the petition says. The board adopted a resolution May 26 condemning him, calling for his resignation, demanding reimbursement and barring him from related executive sessions.

Bradley was appointed to Lehighton’s board Nov. 13, 2025, on a 5-3 board vote, filling the seat of Sean Gleaves, who resigned. The term runs through December 2027.

Four questions, no ruling

President Judge Roger N. Nanovic took up four legal questions he ordered briefed in August, but did not rule from the bench.

The central dispute is whether Section 318 of the Public School Code, which allows a court to remove directors who neglect mandatory duties, reaches what Bradley did.

Which duty, and whose

The petitioners’ attorney, Matthew Mottola, told the court two provisions impose that duty: Section 1409 of the school code, which makes student health records confidential, and a state Board of Education regulation, 22 Pa. Code § 12.31, requiring school boards to adopt a plan for the collection, maintenance and dissemination of student records.

Nanovic pressed on whether those obligations run to one director.

“Is it an obligation on the individual members of the board?” he asked.

“I think it’s an obligation on the individual members of the board when they come into control of those types of records,” Mottola said.

Asked whether any court had ever said a regulation can supply the mandatory duty, the attorney acknowledged none has.

“There is no case saying that, but I also think there is no case saying that regulations cannot be the basis for it,” Mottola added.

Nonfeasance or misfeasance

Much of the afternoon turned on the distinction between nonfeasance, which Section 318 covers, and misfeasance, which it does not. The petitioners leaned on Hetherington v. Rogers, a 2010 Commonwealth Court decision upholding removal of directors who took numerous affirmative steps but failed for two years to hire a qualified superintendent.

“Nonfeasance does not mean complete inaction. You can commit nonfeasance while still committing affirmative acts,” Mottola said. “Our focus is when Mr. Bradley, sitting as a school director, comes into control of these records.”

‘A private citizen’

J. Chadwick Schnee, Bradley’s attorney, said the petition never identifies a single school code section his client failed to perform.

“Section 318 is a penal statute, and therefore must be strictly construed,” Schnee said. He pointed to a 1945 state Supreme Court ruling holding a director removable “not for doing evil things in office but for not functioning as a director in respect to his mandatory duties.”

Schnee said Bradley filed his right-to-know request April 21, 2022, more than three years before the board appointed him.

“There’s no mandatory duty that says an individual school board director is prohibited from publishing information that they receive from right-to-know law requests,” Schnee said. “He was functioning as a private citizen who received public records from the school district.”

When Nanovic asked whether releasing records the code says must stay confidential amounts to nonfeasance, Schnee said no.

“That’s a prohibition. Something he can’t do. It’s not something he has to do,” he added. “It has to be something that (a board member is) required to do by the statute, and that’s not present.”

The judge also questioned the district’s role. The petition states the district produced the records on USB drives after agreeing to redact them and after running a quality-control check, and that unredacted information got through anyway.

“Someone dropped the ball,” Nanovic said.

The anti-SLAPP claim

Both sides also argued the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP law, which Bradley says makes him immune and entitles him to attorney fees.

The petitioners argued that Section 318 is a statutory proceeding, not a cause of action, and that disclosing a student’s medical information is not protected public expression.

“He can speak however he wants on those issues about the finances of the school district. We have no basis for removal for that,” Mottola said. “The focus of this removal proceeding is on the fact that there were confidential records that he did disclose.”

Nanovic questioned Monday whether the two statutes line up.

“I’m not sure that 318 and the UPEPA can be construed identically in whether a person is acting in a personal or official capacity,” he said.

Who belongs in the case

On the fourth issue, Schnee argued the district and the board are indispensable parties whose absence deprives the court of jurisdiction.

The petitioners cited the Summit Hill School Directors’ Removal, a 1927 Supreme Court case interpreting the predecessor statute, which allowed a proceeding against fewer than all directors.

“Why should nine members have to go to court to answer for the conduct of one member?” Nanovic asked.

The petitioners have also moved to supplement their filing with three notarized verifications after Bradley argued the original unsworn verifications do not satisfy the statute’s requirement of an oath or affirmation.