In a response to state Sen. Amanda Chase’s lawsuit claiming her civil rights were violated by her political censure last month, attorneys representing the Virginia State Senate and its clerk filed documents Monday seeking the suit’s dismissal under sovereign and legislative immunity protection of the defendants.
Chase’s attorney, Tim Anderson of Virginia Beach, filed suit on behalf of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Feb. 1 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 month’s censure resolution, passed 24-9, in the official journal of the Senate of Virginia.
Chase, R-Chesterfield County, argued that the resolution violated her First Amendment right to freedom of speech and the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment, after she was censured for her speech and actions over the past two years, including participating in a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, hours before supporters of the former president violently breached the U.S. Capitol. 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.”
