In a victory for protecting future elections and the parents who step up to serve our Eanes community, on Friday, October 4th, a Travis County District Judge denied Eanes ISD Trustee Kelly Marwill’s motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit against her. This is an important step in putting an end to the actions of a small group of people who think they control our school district, known as the Westlake Smear Cartel (“The Cartel”). Over many past elections, instead of engaging us on issues of teacher pay, bond indebtedness and budget, and district sustainability, they smeared their opponents, fabricated lies, and attempted to scare the community into giving them power, again.
That ends now.
Here is why Friday’s ruling is so important.
1) Admissions by Trustee Marwill in her Defense Strategy.
Without boring you with all the legal jargon and precedent, her defense strategy of being protected by “free speech” is complex. In order to invoke the free speech exception to defamation (known as the ‘anti-SLAPP defense’), the Defendant - in this case Trustee Kelly Marwill - must tacitly admit that the allegations are true but protected by her free speech rights. Effectively Marwill is saying, ‘Yes, what is alleged in the defamation suit happened, but I am still protected under my First Amendment rights of free speech .’ The judge denied this defense.
2) A Travis County Judge has ruled there are limits to “free speech”
The court has drawn a line in the sand that may be important for future elections, not just in Eanes but across the state of Texas. It is and should be our right to disagree on policy, to challenge ideas, to even say that your opponents are ‘bad’ or ‘stupid.’ However, it is not any person’s right to alter court documents and manufacture evidence and then use that information in an activity that is protected by free speech, such as posting on anonymous social media accounts as they did.
This is a major decision by Travis county to allow the trial to move forward as my entire mission post-election is to prevent this from happening to other good parents and citizens in the future who simply want to make our school district even better.
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As you know, in the final weeks of my campaign for EISD school board trustee, The Cartel continued its practice of smear tactics and lies, this time targeting me and my family. The defendants in this case, Trustee Kelly Marwill and Kimberly Taylor, are accused of altering almost 20 year old court documents to make me seem like a monster, sharing those documents in a coordinated political drive-by and hit job on anonymous social media accounts they owned, operated or controlled, and then amplifying the lies through posts to their personal and political campaign email lists and social media accounts.
There is no way to know whether their smear campaign affected the result of the election, which I lost by a mere 103 votes. My family and I have accepted those results and I don’t dispute that Trustee Marwill is the elected School Board Trustee. Today, we should all question whether she is suitable to maintain that seat under the circumstances of her unethical and illegal behavior.
But, as somebody who was running to try to use my CEO and entrepreneurial experience to help Eanes address teacher retention and pay, negotiate better deals for taxpayers, and get a handle on our future growth and enrollment challenges, it was shocking they would stoop to this level. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I will plan to keep you all up-to-date as things progress in the case and in the other efforts we have planned.
Best,
Aaron Silva
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