State Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, speaks during the Senate's Jan. 14 session.
A week after being censured by the state Senate, Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield County, is suing the legislative body and its clerk for violating Chase’s civil rights, including her First Amendment right to freedom of speech, she announced Monday.
Virginia Beach attorney Tim Anderson said Monday he has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Chase in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia. The suit seeks an injunction to prevent Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar from publishing last week’s censure resolution in the official journal of the Senate of Virginia.
Chase, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, also seeks a declaratory judgment that the passed censure resolution — which focused on Chase’s speech and behavior over the past two years — is in violation of her right to free speech under the First Amendment. The suit also seeks to force Schaar to expunge the record of an earlier version of the censure, which argued that Chase engaged in “fomenting insurrection” by participating in a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, a few hours before Trump supporters participated in a violent insurrectionist breach of the U.S. Capitol. She left the area before the siege and had left Washington altogether by mid-afternoon.
