The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220215_top-exec-resigns-and-turns-down-1-million-to-speak

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Feb. 15, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:31:37

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Fighting Back Over COVID Restrictions 00:02:52
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Today, we'll be speaking with parents who are Fighting back over COVID restrictions.
	Now that mask mandates are being lifted, you see, mask enthusiasts across the country are filing lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep the mandates in place.
	Will they ever give it up?
	And will this tactic work?
	Because it's happening in several states.
	Later, we go to ground zero in the fight, which is in Pennsylvania, with an attorney, a school board member, and a parent involved in all of this.
	But first, we are joined for an exclusive interview with the now former president.
	Of Levi's, Levi's jeans.
	Jennifer Say was a self described left of left of center Elizabeth Warren supporter, and no one at her company cared about her political advocacy then.
	That all changed, however, with the pandemic and lockdowns that had her kids, like so many others, and her community falling behind.
	Well, she has now resigned her position.
	She was in line to become the next CEO.
	She has now resigned as president of Levi's after blowback internally and externally.
	So, that she can speak freely about her feelings and about what happened to her at Levi's.
	And she joins me now.
	Jen, welcome.
	Thank you so much for being here.
	Thanks for having me, Megan.
	I'm a big fan of your show.
	Oh, thank you.
	So, I think what you did is very brave.
	You spoke out repeatedly while at the company and then in the end rejected a seven figure number so you could tell your story.
	And so, let me just confirm that.
	So, when it was clear to you, Levi's had had it with you speaking out about COVID.
	They offered you a million dollars to go quietly.
	They wanted you, you believe they'd have you sign a non disclosure.
	And what did you tell them?
	Well, yeah, it was clear that there was not going to be a path forward for me at the company, especially since, you know, the seat I sit in or sat in up until Sunday is really the seat that leads to CEOs.
	They certainly can't have someone in that seat if that's not a viable option.
	And yeah, you know, they wanted me to stick around for a bit.
	And it's inevitable you sign an NDA when you get a severance package, not just as an executive, as anyone.
	And I knew I didn't want that.
	I wanted to be able to talk about what happened.
	It was important to me because the issue, you know, I've been speaking out in defense of kids, and I know we'll talk about that.
The Seat That Leads To CEOs 00:04:04
	But I think the other issue at stake is really about free speech and the stifling of dissent.
	And, you know, I can't talk about that in as powerful a way if I can't tell my story.
	Yes.
	Oh my gosh.
	This is how they muzzle you.
	I mean, I wouldn't know anything about that, Jen.
	I would have no idea what it's like to have a company muzzle you in order to give you, well, it could be severance or it could just be salary to which you're contractually entitled.
	You know, maybe sometimes the company signs an actual deal saying you are owed this money and then they won't give it to you unless you sign one of these agreements.
	I'm just saying out of the ether, that can happen.
	But let's get back to you.
	So let's maybe don't know.
	22 years ago, let's go back a little further so that our audience knows.
	Who you are.
	I mean, you're an award winning, you're a national champ in gymnastics.
	1986, you are a national champion.
	That's correct.
	Often known as the worst national champion ever.
	I wear that with pride.
	What?
	It's not a challenge.
	It's fine.
	You were big in the gymnastics world, and that set you up for a career in leadership and exposed you to some world travel.
	And you wrote a great piece for Barry Weiss's Substack yesterday about sort of trips to Russia and how much they loved American gear like jeans, and you'd bring them over there.
	And it just sort of gave you a taste.
	This is back in the 80s when we're still in the Cold War for people's.
	Maybe not leaders, but people's respect for America and their desire to live freely the way we at least used to over here.
	Yes.
	I was very lucky in 1986, as you mentioned, I was the national champion in gymnastics.
	It was somewhat unexpected.
	And, you know, this is in the years when, in the throes of, you know, all the conflict around the Olympics and there were boycotts, there was boycotts in 1980, the U.S. boycotted the Olympics.
	In 84, when it was in LA, the Russians boycotted.
	And so Ted Turner started this thing called the Goodwill Games.
	And the intention was really to take the politics out of sports, which I think is, you know, interesting, a bit impossible, I would say these days, but certainly interesting.
	It always seemed very sad to me that these athletes that had trained their whole lives, you know, could miss out on this dream that they'd trained so hard for because of politics outside of their control.
	I won the Nationals in 86, and I traveled to Moscow for the Goodwill Games with a bunch of my teammates.
	And I was told, bring 501s.
	You know, there's this symbol of all that is right and good with our country about freedom and inclusion and, you know, democracy.
	And I really, you know, the Russians were the best in the world at the time.
	And so to be able to trade with them for leotards and pins and, you know, sweatsuits, 501s were the ticket.
	So I filled my suitcase with very tiny 501s.
	And was able to trade, which was pretty awesome.
	And I know what you mean.
	I think we're about the same age.
	And you used to go to other countries as an American and be super proud to be an American and sort of understood, we did and others did, that we were the home of the free, that this was the most exciting, amazing place on earth to live because anything was possible.
	The American dream was possible here.
	You could come from nothing and make everything.
	And that we had these.
	Principles that we held so dear over here, which were shockingly unusual in most parts of the world about free speech and due process and our independence, fierce independence, and small government and all of it, right?
	So I get that.
	And I'm sure that was baked into you, baked into you as it was most of us Gen Xers.
	Yeah, I think we are about the same age.
	Yeah, I mean, there was this notion of rugged individualism, you know, be who you are, live authentically, speak your mind.
Tenacity After Getting Knocked Down 00:06:07
	I certainly grew up with that instilled in me from my parents.
	And I grew up with a lot of advantages, certainly.
	I worked really hard in the gym, punishingly hard, too hard, I would argue.
	No child should actually do what I had to do.
	But, you know, I definitely believed in, you know, being able to speak out.
	Now, I will say the environment in gymnastics is one of instilled obedience.
	I mean, obedience was the highest virtue.
	You know, you just kept your mouth shut when abuse was all around you.
	And in fact, you didn't even think of it as abuse, it was just the way things operated.
	And you knew that you felt really bad.
	You were really hungry.
	You were humiliated because you were weighed in twice a day and your weight was announced on a loudspeaker if you gained a quarter pound.
	But I was known as the stoic.
	I didn't ever say anything.
	I trained on a broken ankle for two years.
	There were known sexual abusers on staff.
	In fact, the national team coach at the time has now been banned from the sport for raping an athlete.
	But you were not to talk about these things because you were to protect the reputations.
	Of USA Gymnastics, as well as the coaches, you know, the high profile coaches.
	So you just shut your mouth and you kept training.
	And you didn't really understand that all your friends and teammates were suffering as well.
	It seemed like, well, I can't say anything because look, they're all handling it.
	But when I came out of the sport, I was really, really suffering.
	And this is all to say I understood those values, you know, that you talk about those American values of individualism, but I was certainly trained not to exercise them.
	And it's been a long road.
	To kind of overcome that obedience that was so deeply instilled in us as child athletes.
	You were also, though, at the same time learning how to overcome massive obstacles and challenges, not just your competitors, but as you point out, your injuries.
	There was a story about you, was it right before the national competition?
	But with two black eyes and broken bones, you took a fall on a beam.
	Can you just tell that story?
	Because not everybody's got this thing that would make them get back up and keep fighting.
	It was 1985.
	I was a member of the national team.
	And, you know, I first made my national team in 1981.
	So I was, you know, 11 years old.
	It's a very young sport, as I'm sure you know, although I'm pleased to see that, you know, it's becoming more possible to do the sport a bit longer with the right training methods.
	And by 1984, I was sort of, you know, I was a senior.
	So that's the teams that travel and go to world championships and things like that.
	But I really wanted to break into the top six.
	I was sort of hovering around seven, eight, nine.
	And I begged my parents to let me go to this gym in Allentown that was a top club, a national training center.
	I went there in 1983.
	And by 1985, I had broken in.
	I think I placed six at a nationals.
	And then we had world championship trials.
	And that was going to be my first major international competition.
	And it was a big question mark as to whether I'd make it.
	I certainly wasn't firmly established in that group.
	A couple days before, as I was training at home and starving myself because I needed to make the weight that they gave me, I hadn't eaten in quite some time.
	I fell on beam and I hit my head and I fell to the floor and I was sort of dizzy for a moment.
	I put my hand to my head and there was blood.
	And they took me to the hospital, of course.
	I ended up having broken a finger or two fingers and had needed stitches in my head, which I did not get because they didn't want me to have to shave the.
	Front of my head because that would look bad.
	It's a very aesthetically driven sport.
	The doctor said to me, You know, just know you could get black eyes because sometimes when you hit your head, it bleeds downwards.
	But I left and I was fine.
	I went to school the next morning, and mid morning, everybody was staring at me.
	I looked fine when I went to school, but by mid morning, everybody was staring at me.
	And I went into the bathroom and I had two huge shiners, like it had bled downward into my face.
	And I was sent to the nurse's office.
	And of course, they were concerned that there was abuse at home.
	And I Reassured them by saying, No, no, no, this is from the gym.
	And they're like, Oh, okay, that's okay.
	I did this to myself.
	Yeah, I did it to myself.
	I'd been sent twice to the nurse's office once because I had a bunch of scrapes and bruises on my face.
	And every time, It was fine because it was in the gym.
	And, you know, this club in this, this was in Allentown, was sort of heroic.
	You know, everybody knew about the Parkettes.
	That was the name.
	And so if you said it was from the gym, there was no, it was just sort of dismissed as, well, that's, that's fine.
	You can get black eyes and break your foot.
	Anyway, so I went to world championship trials with two black eyes and two broken fingers and ended up placing second, which was the highest rank I'd ever achieved.
	So, yeah, then I went to world championships from there.
	But yes, I had two black eyes and A couple broken fingers, but this was sort of standard operating procedure.
	I'd broken my ankle the year before and I had gone back to training in like 10 days, you know, got the cast off so I could keep training.
	It certainly wasn't healed.
	To me, it's, I take your point about obedience in a sport like gymnastics and how it was reinforced over and over.
	But as I was reading your story, I also saw the development of something else just a tenacity, you know, getting knocked down and getting back up and having obstacles put in your way.
	Of something that you want, and you just keep jumping over them.
	You know, you just keep, you jump over them hurt, you jump over them hobbled, you just keep jumping over them.
	You're really not easily stopped, which of course becomes relevant over the past two years, right?
	And so to jump forward from the gymnastics to the start of your career at Levi's, and I should mention this is in San Francisco.
Advocacy For Public School Children 00:15:19
	That's where you've been based all this, you know, past 20 plus years.
	But 22 years ago, you joined them in a junior position, marketing director, work your way up, chief marketing officer, global.
	Brand president.
	You know, clearly you're doing well.
	Your career is going well.
	And you say that during all this time, not only were they fine with you taking political positions online, you know, a lot of companies don't like that.
	Levi's was fine with it, but even Levi's would take political positions.
	It's San Francisco based, so not particularly surprising, but all of that was a okay up until more recently.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	And I mean, in all honesty, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm ever evolving my views, which I think is.
	Is good.
	I think we always should stay open to new inputs.
	But I'll admit, it was always one of the things I loved about the company.
	We used a phrase, profits through principles take the harder right over the easier wrong.
	And I think, especially when it pertained to employees, it was really meaningful to me.
	And it was one of the reasons I stayed there so long.
	It was the first Fortune 500 company to offer same sex partner benefits.
	That's way before anybody ever talked about.
	Marriage equality, and they certainly got blowback for these things.
	It was only quite recently when we started, I should stop saying we, when they started talking out, you know, from not just internally, but to our consumers and our fans about stances that we were taking, inclusive of LGBTQ rights and equality, women's equality, civic engagement through, you know, voting.
	That was a big one.
	And so, yes, we were not shy about it, sometimes taking controversial stances.
	And so, that's what's all the more troubling about this because it can't be said that, well, we just don't take stances.
	We don't speak publicly.
	We do.
	It's just this, it's literally what I was saying.
	I mean, we ran a campaign that I led, I was the architect of, called Use Your Voice.
	And, you know, I meant it.
	I meant it when I led that campaign.
	Stand up, say it, say the thing, say what you care about, make a difference.
	Individuals can make a difference.
	And yet, when they were pushing it, they never dreamed that you would use it.
	No, and I wasn't prescribing the politics they didn't believe in.
	That's right.
	And I wasn't prescribing the content of use your voice, I was asserting the value of simply using one's voice.
	And, you know, it just became very clear in the last two years that, oh no, don't say that.
	Not that content.
	What you were upset about was something that is now universally condemned, pretty much universally, which is school closures.
	It's not even like you were out on the thinnest reed, you know, saying, I don't want vaccine mandates.
	That would be more controversial in left wing circles.
	But like, don't close the schools.
	That was what they were so upset about?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's what's sort of hard to swallow about all of this.
	And, you know, I have been very focused on schools and kids in particular.
	You know, I have views on some of the other aspects of all of this.
	But I, you know, this has been an extension of child advocacy that started when I wrote my book about the abuses in the sport of gymnastics and then made a film in 2020, Athlete Day, or that came out in 2020.
	Which further exposed the abuses and the crimes of Larry Nasser and featured the brave survivors who basically sent him to prison.
	So I just viewed this as an extension of that.
	It's children.
	I don't even view that as politics.
	I mean, kids, that's not political.
	Isn't that something we can all agree on?
	Children and their right to a fair and equal education.
	It doesn't, you know, people sort of keep deeming this political speech.
	I mean, I have to be honest with you, I never really even thought of it as political.
	It's like kids getting to go to school, really?
	That's political.
	And, you know, I very quickly became aware that this, when I first started, it was March of 2020.
	Like it was immediate because it just seemed so obvious to me that this was wrong.
	The age stratification of risk.
	And that remote learning was a joke.
	Yeah.
	And that the age stratification of risk, I mean, you know, following what was happening in Italy closely, the median age of death was 81.
	Children were gratefully spared.
	And so it didn't seem controversial to me.
	That's how naive and stupid I guess I was.
	I quickly learned.
	That it was when I was, you know, arguing with friends and family on Facebook.
	I sort of stopped going on Facebook and I went over to Twitter where I could argue with strangers essentially.
	And it's.
	How old are your kids now?
	Well, I have four kids.
	So I have two older, 21 and 18, who are in college, and I have two younger, seven and five.
	Okay.
	And so, yeah, you're watching your seven and five year old do absolutely nothing.
	I mean, it's what they were doing, remote schooling is.
	Totally pointless.
	It doesn't get much better as they get older.
	But I had a seven year old during the lockdown and he absolutely did nothing.
	I mean, it was completely pointless.
	It was like online babysitting.
	Yeah, it's absurd.
	I mean, for my child that's seven now, who's in first grade, we moved to Denver and he's in first grade here.
	We came in the middle of kindergarten last year so he could have some of a first year of school.
	It was a joke.
	I mean, we didn't make him do it.
	Like, he can't read.
	How's he going to type and do Zoom school?
	It's like the dumbest thing ever.
	And You know, if you could say that a six year old was depressed, which I think you can, you know, we were just getting more and more concerned.
	And, you know, we were a family living in a nice apartment, but an apartment with no yard in San Francisco.
	The playgrounds were closed for nine months.
	Playgrounds.
	It was just cruel.
	And California was just, you know, California schools stayed shut longer than any other state in the country.
	You know, I could sort of accept it in the spring of 2020, kind of when you could argue we didn't know that much by fall.
	Of 2020, when the private schools all opened and the public schools, which my kids attend, stayed closed.
	Then I was like, well, this is just class ridiculousness.
	Like, how can anyone stand for this?
	How can we think this is okay?
	How can we stay?
	We care about equality and only let the wealthy kids go to school.
	And my kids do have privilege and I know they'll be okay.
	And we were able to, you know, we have good Wi Fi and all that, but they do go to public school.
	And I've always wanted them to go to public school.
	I believe in the public school system.
	But in the fall, it became clear schools weren't going to open even then.
	And I just became incensed.
	And then in the spring, when they put, you know, they prioritized teachers for vaccination, promised that would be the end, and they still didn't open the schools.
	That's when I just.
	I couldn't take it anymore.
	So, you had been speaking out from the beginning.
	You'd been meeting with the mayor's office.
	You'd been writing op eds.
	You'd been going on social media.
	You'd been just demanding that the schools open back up.
	Again, I mean, especially in retrospect, not a controversial position and 100% the right position.
	And the blowback began internally.
	I mean, it sounds like it was up and down the ranks your fellow employees, HR, corporate communications, all the way up to eventually the CEO of the company.
	That's where we're going to pick it up after I squeeze in this quick break.
	Don't go away.
	Jennifer's staying with us.
	So, Jen, how did you first experience the blowback?
	It sort of started kind of slowly.
	Like I said, I had been outspoken about kids in school since literally March 2020, so the very beginning.
	I didn't have a large following on social media at the time.
	I sort of thought, Well, no one's on Twitter, I guess, not paying attention.
	That boy was I wrong.
	And by the summer of 2020, I did get a call from our head of corporate communications, my peer, my friend, saying, you know, you might really want to think about toning it down.
	And I explained, as I've explained to you, that this really was an extension of my advocacy for children and public school children in particular were really suffering.
	And I felt really strongly about it.
	So, are you telling me I have to stop?
	Well, no, of course, we can't do that.
	And I said, okay, then.
	Then I'm not going to, but I'll be careful.
	But then the calls kept coming throughout the summer.
	And then by the fall, there were some really interesting articles starting to be published.
	There was the Alec McGillis piece in ProPublica.
	And I thought, well, the dam is going to break on this.
	People are going to acknowledge and recognize that the school closures are wrong and that there's harm being done.
	And I thought, I wrote a formal proposal to many of my peers at the company saying, why don't we take a stand?
	We've been so outspoken on a Quality.
	This is just to be clear.
	Are we talking fall of 2021?
	No, there's been so many.
	That's how long we've been dealing with this fall of 2020.
	I know we've been in this a while, but it was the fall of 2020, I think in October.
	And I wrote a formal proposal to say, you know, we've been so outspoken on all these issues.
	We use our influence.
	Why don't we do it here?
	This is fundamentally an issue of equality because it's disadvantaged children primarily that are in, you know, disproportionately in the public schools.
	Plus, it's affecting parents, you know, that work for us.
	They can't.
	Work, right?
	That mothers are doing childcare.
	And I cited some data and some of the pieces that were being written, like I said, by Alec McGillis, who's written so beautifully on the subject.
	And while they empathized, the response simply was, we don't weigh in on hyper local issues.
	And the real kind of kick in the pants was, and our execs' kids go to private, so this doesn't really look good for us.
	And I said, mine go to public.
	I'm an exec.
	I can be the voice, I can be the face.
	But it was just a no.
	And they did, you know, I was introduced to folks in the mayor's office, and like I said, you know, by peers at the company.
	And so, You know, it wasn't contentious really that I'd written this proposal and that it was rejected, but it really set off alarm bells for me, at least the rationale.
	But meanwhile, can I just say, like, the fact that there are executives who have kids in private that only makes them look better to be advocating for the kids who are in public?
	It's like they could just go on with their merry lives and forget about the public school kids.
	Wouldn't it be nicer if those who have the means to put their kids in private school actually used whatever forms they have and they're probably significant?
	To go back and rescue the other kids.
	Well, exactly.
	Yes.
	And one of my closest friends that has been in this with me in San Francisco, her kids don't go to public school.
	Her name is Laura Figg, and her kids don't go to public.
	And she cares anyway.
	Are we only supposed to care about things that affect us?
	I mean, one of the sort of things people are saying, well, she's so privileged, me.
	She should just shut up.
	It's like, so are.
	People, I'm not denying that I've been very lucky and I have privilege and my kids do, but does that mean I'm not supposed to care at all about people that don't?
	That's what makes it better.
	You could be sitting, I'm sure you can afford a tutor.
	You, like you said, you got the laptops, you got the Wi Fi.
	You can probably have very sophisticated friend circles if you needed to via remote learning to get your friends what they need and your kids what they need.
	It's the people who don't have means, who need advocates, who don't have high power positions at massive corporations or can get on cable news primetime.
	Those are the people who they need people like you to.
	To make a stink.
	This is, that's all just bullshit.
	Those excuses are bullshit to try to get you to be quiet in a message that they didn't support.
	Yes, all of that.
	I completely, I completely agree.
	And I, you know, I don't think it takes a ton of imagination to know how these children are being harmed.
	I mean, I obviously know the families in public school because my children have been in public school in San Francisco since, you know, 2005.
	So I can see it with my own eyes, but I don't think even if you can't, it takes, it's a, Total failure of imagination to not believe or understand that these children are suffering.
	It also just reveals the hypocrisy, obviously, because the real reason was, you know, it makes us look bad and it also goes against the Democratic narrative right now.
	Yes, that's right.
	And, you know, I'm a lifelong Democrat.
	I've said this, you know, publicly many times.
	You mentioned it.
	I've never not been a registered Democrat until very recently.
	I'm now unaffiliated.
	That's what they call it here in Colorado.
	And I just feel it's a total failure by the Democratic Party.
	I mean, this principle of protecting children and equal access to public education.
	I mean, I just thought that Democrats cared about that, you know, and they've failed.
	They've dropped the ball and it just became, it was this like unspeakable, horrible thing.
	You couldn't say it because it contradicted what they were doing.
	And you're right now, Megan, it seems uncontroversial now, but you and I both remember.
	That in the fall of, you know, in both New York and California, if you advocated for open schools, you wanted to kill teachers.
	You didn't care.
	You were, you know, you wanted to kill grandma and you wanted to kill black children.
	I mean, so the slander was intense, you know.
	Speaking of that, so I know you were accused of, among other things, and I've talked about my one friend in New York who her kids, similar to San Fran, they were New York Publix, kept out of school almost the entire school year last year, all fall.
	And virtually all of the spring.
	And so, late spring, when she fed up, she finally went to an open the schools rally and she got called a white supremacist.
	And it was like, wait, what?
	That was a head turn.
	Like, wait, what do you mean?
	I just want my kids to be in school and your kids to be in school, but they went to the race place.
	Which they did with you too.
	And I know for a good reason you found that particularly obnoxious and ill founded.
	You can explain why.
	Yeah.
	And yes.
	And I mean, ours were closed all through the spring of 2021 as well.
	I mean, I think they opened a couple days for kindergarten and homeless children that were in particularly challenging situations, but it wasn't a meaningful opening.
	But the accusation of racism, as well as I would say eugenicism, which I also find pub.
	Quick puzzling came early and often, you know, came immediately in the summer of 2020.
	And it just is absurd.
	I have four children.
Escalating Tensions With Leadership 00:13:19
	I, you know, I don't want to use my children in any way as a shield.
	But my two older children are mixed race.
	My first husband is Black, and those children, you know, are mixed race.
	And so this notion that I just want to kill Black children, which would include my own, is just patently absurd on its face.
	And so as those accusations came, I just, I rejected it.
	You know, I didn't even sort of cower in the face of it because it's so patently absurd on its face.
	And I don't think that I would need to have black children for that to be absurd on its face.
	You know, I mean, it's just something that makes your case a little bit more unique.
	I mean, it's they don't care.
	Nothing will inoculate you from charges of racism or bigotry.
	Really, it doesn't matter which issue you pick to defy the left on.
	It could be something having absolutely nothing to do with race and they'll hurl that at you to undermine you.
	So, what's the.
	That's the point, it just shuts down all conversation because that makes you an unemployable person to be called that and to be accused of that.
	And so it's supposed to make you just sort of shrink away and stop talking because no one wants to be called that.
	It's a horrible accusation.
	But I reject it on its face.
	Well, they use it so often, they've made it less horrible.
	I mean, that's the irony of their tactic.
	They've undermined a word that we need to remain strong for good reason.
	And they're doing their level best to completely water it down and make it meaningless.
	So, what, when you look back, so the head of corporate communications came to you.
	I know that at one point the HR head came to you and the CEO gave you a mild brushback at first, right?
	Like, be careful, something along those lines.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, you know, a few had talked to me before him, all my peers, head of legal as well, just reminding me when you talk, you talk on behalf of the company.
	And I said, but I don't.
	I'm not.
	I'm a person, I'm a public school mom.
	And eventually he did talk to me.
	You know, it's not something he likes to do, have these unpleasant conversations.
	He's a very nice person.
	CEO.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, and he's a nice person.
	He doesn't like to have these unpleasant conversations, which I understand, but he did.
	And again, it was sort of the same kind of reminder you know, you're speaking on behalf of the company.
	I was very careful not to have, you know, my title or the company in any of my bios.
	So I, It was clear, even if you could easily find that I was the president of Levi's, it was clear that I was not speaking on behalf of Levi's.
	And at the end of the day, I'm a mom of four first.
	And if, you know, if it comes to, well, you do speak on behalf of the company when you talk just because of who you are, I pick my kids.
	And I, yeah, you have to abandon your children.
	We're more important.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I pick my kids and the kids in this country.
	It's not just about my kids, it was the kids in San Francisco, the 50,000 public school students who were home.
	Not getting an education.
	So, you know, I made my choice.
	I knew, I think, as I continued to persist and push back and watch my tone, I, you know, I definitely.
	Was diplomatic, I think.
	Yeah.
	You were not a bomb thrower.
	I went back, I looked at your tweets and your Laura Ingram appearance.
	I mean, I'll just give folks an example.
	This is from a tweet thread that I think was July of 2021.
	And you wrote something like Look, my children, the children, need to participate in sports and hug friends and even teachers.
	They're not required to think of themselves as filthy vectors of disease.
	This is when you moved them to Colorado.
	They participate now in public life.
	They go to the playground en masse.
	They're relatively carefree, the way four and six year olds should be.
	Adults protect them, their childhood, not the other way around.
	In San Francisco, another year of school is threatened.
	Third school year, unbelievable.
	Poor kids suffer the most.
	Inequality deepens.
	Children are stigmatized.
	This is not out there stuff.
	And then this line jumped out at me, given everything that's happened.
	You're talking about how we otherize one another and we don't accept difference.
	And you say, any deviation from the orthodoxy.
	The mainstream narrative is demonized.
	You are canceled.
	And that is eventually what would effectively happen to you months later.
	And for nothing, for nothing other than trying to get the schools open for your kids and others.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you could argue when I wrote that, I saw the writing on the wall, I guess.
	And, you know, after speaking with the CEO, and it is worth noting, Megan, that amidst all of this, I got promoted.
	I mean, I got promoted.
	Promoted in October of 2020 to brand president.
	Before that, I was the chief marketing officer.
	So there were certainly no issues with my performance.
	You know, I was rewarded with one of the top three jobs in the company.
	And as you mentioned earlier, you know, the conversation around CEO became very real at that point, but it was sort of conditional.
	You need to watch what you say.
	You can't talk about this anymore.
	You shouldn't talk about this anymore.
	And I think I couldn't do it.
	I don't know what to.
	I don't even know how to describe it.
	It's like, I can't.
	The kids are hurting.
	I just can't.
	It didn't matter what the cost to me was.
	And it became clear that there was a high likelihood I would lose my job.
	I certainly, for a year, have been very nervous about getting fired.
	It's such a weird position to go from I'm either going to be CEO or I'm fired.
	I'm going to figure out which.
	And what have I done again?
	I've stood up for children going to school, something that was mandated and Required by the law up until recently.
	It's so important.
	The law has recognized we must make it happen in normal circumstances.
	Yeah.
	I mean, what happened, I think, that really just escalated things for the leadership in the company is I did get a somewhat larger following, and I definitely got some trolls on social media, as one does.
	And with the same sort of stuff racist, eugenicists, I got some anti trans.
	I'm not totally sure where that came from.
	Throw another one in there in the mix.
	And they started tagging my employer and saying, boycott Levi's.
	Now, it didn't affect our business.
	Shit happens on social media all the time.
	I'm sure you know this.
	You swat it away.
	It doesn't matter.
	And these were largely people that were very small followings.
	It wasn't picking up steam in any way.
	But outside of social media, some of the gymnastics fans who liked me for a hot second after Athlete Day came out.
	Started a petition on Reddit to fire me.
	And I think they were calling the ethics hotline.
	And then employees were following me on social media and they were upset by it.
	So they started emailing my boss.
	And so it just, there was a lot of noise and it can feel.
	Bigger, I think, than it is, right?
	Like, because when I look back at it all now, I think ignore the social media.
	It really never got started into anything meaningful.
	And say to the company, you may not agree with her, and that's okay.
	We all have a right to speak up.
	We use our voice.
	That's what we advocate for.
	And there it's done.
	And I will, you know, I do want to note at first that happened.
	You know, Chip did stand up for me in a town hall.
	There was a ton of Blowback from the Laura Ingram appearance, which I knew would happen, although I stand by everything I said there.
	And he did defend me.
	You know, there were town halls, there was a town hall, and there was a lot of criticism and anonymous comments about my racism and anti science views.
	And he said, you know, she's standing up for kids in public school and she has a right to say it.
	And that was sort of the end of any public support.
	That was definitely the end.
	And from there, the noise just got greater.
	And I know he was getting emails, and I know there were calls to the ethics hotline, and it all just, I was too much trouble.
	I was more trouble than I was worth.
	What did he say when he said to you something like, the only thing standing between you and your eventual taking over as CEO is you, like this behavior?
	Yeah.
	I mean, because keep in mind, I see this was all sort of escalating in the summer of 21.
	The conversation.
	I had with him about CEO and that being a possible path for me.
	That happened in the fall of 21.
	So, you know, there was still, I got a lot of kudos for, you know, for my performance.
	And as a leader, you know, I'm a passionate manager and leader, and I care about people and I want people to be able to do the work of their lives that they feel really proud of for a company that they feel proud of.
	And I work really hard at that.
	And he recognized that.
	He recognized that.
	It sounds like he recognized it, but was basically saying, It's conditional that your next step is conditional on you stopping this.
	We don't.
	That's right.
	And I.
	And meanwhile, you write about how your colleagues were out there, you know, a year earlier constantly defeat Trump.
	We got to get that nightmare out of there.
	Like all that advocacy went by with no problem.
	But you fighting for the children, that's a job coster.
	Yeah, that was fine.
	And I, who knows?
	I'm sure people are digging through all my social media right now to find some terribly unacceptable thing I've said.
	I, I, I did talk about politics, and that was always fine.
	As you mentioned, I was a Warren supporter in the Democratic primary, which I would do that differently, but that's fine.
	We all make mistakes.
	That was all fine.
	And I posted about the Ahmaud Arbery murder and how horrifying and sad it was.
	That one really hit me hard.
	That was all fine.
	So, once again, you're a lawyer, this is viewpoint discrimination.
	The argument was we can't talk about these.
	Things that are political or controversial, but we can.
	It was literally the viewpoint.
	And I think for me, this is so much more than Levi's.
	I mean, you know, my career there is over.
	It's a career I'm very proud of.
	But this is what's happening in the culture more broadly, as you know.
	And the company is just sort of caught up in the whirlwind of it.
	But it's this idea of stifling dissent and, you know, any view outside of whatever the orthodoxy is, whatever the mainstream narrative, or I should say, whatever the quote unquote.
	Progressive narrative is that's unacceptable.
	And it's so crazy, though.
	It's like, doesn't Levi, you know, back to the Michael Jordan's Republicans buy sneakers too.
	Republicans wear Levi's too.
	Like, what do they do?
	A lot.
	Right.
	Disproportionately.
	Right.
	Why wouldn't they say the country is very divided on this issue?
	And we get it.
	Okay.
	So we've got one person taking one side, the rest of our employees are on the other side.
	That makes us a little bit more balanced than some of these other San Francisco based corporations.
	That shows our wearers in middle America.
	We're not just some far left company with uniform views on dicey issues.
	Yeah.
	And that's a huge part of our fan base, as you can imagine, you know.
	Levi's is a heritage brand.
	It's, you know, we've got a lot of more traditional fans, probably disproportionately so for a fashion brand, essentially.
	And we have a global consumer base as well.
	So let's think about that.
	Because as you know, and I know, schools in Europe were prioritized and were open the whole time.
	So certainly these things are not controversial in European countries where not only were the schools open, but the kids weren't masked.
	So, you know, it seems so clear.
	Well, it seemed clear to me all along.
	I don't know if it's Clear to them in hindsight that there was a different way to handle this.
	I certainly think companies are going to need to think long and hard about how they handle this.
	It's an age of social media.
	I don't believe you can ask employees not to be on social media.
	I don't think you can ask them to sign when they join that they're not going to talk about anything on social media.
	Who would join a company like that?
	It's too much a part of our lives.
	And so, how are they going to handle it?
	You have to deal with this issue.
	What's crazy is it's not like you said something like you got caught up in a controversy, you know, like you said something dumb or you sent out an ill advised tweet.
	It wasn't, it was basically just this position is unacceptable.
	And ultimately, you've got to go.
	And I want to talk to you about that conversation in one minute.
	I'm squeezing a break.
	We'll come back with Jen's decision to leave the company and the pressure she got from that boss to do it.
Leaving On My Own Terms 00:03:45
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	Jen, what did the head of the diversity, equity, and inclusion group say to you?
	I had to do, or I was asked to do an apology tour.
	In the spring of 21.
	And I was told to basically say I'm an imperfect ally, which I didn't say I agreed to do it because I thought I'd get fired.
	But I basically just did what I'd been doing, Megan, which is explain myself and my stance.
	And for a moment, that seemed to satisfy, but not for long.
	So they're still operating under the pretense that you've caused some harm to people of color by your positioning that we need to open the schools, which is a lie.
	The head of HR also came to you.
	And what did the head of HR say to you?
	Well, she acknowledged, and she's been much more sort of on our side of things, I would say, than anybody else.
	And she acknowledged privately that these policies were both classist and racist, but that we still needed to be very careful, we being me, as to what we said about it.
	But it was a year and a half at this point.
	I knew that the writing was on the wall.
	You got the head of HR saying these policies you're fighting against are racist.
	You got the head of DEI saying go out there and basically cop to not being an ally to the Black people.
	And they got the head of the company saying, You're going to be the next CEO if only you would just shut up about all this open the schools nonsense.
	Meanwhile, you won the battle because today is the day of the recall election of the school board in San Francisco.
	The San Franciscans are getting ready to dump this school board that put these policies in place that you've been fighting against.
	They're going to do it.
	That recall looks like it's going to go the right way.
	I think so.
	It's extraordinary.
	So, but that's today.
	It was Sunday you resigned.
	So, did the company not soften, right?
	Did the CEO come to you and say, Jen, you got to go?
	Like, what happened?
	I mean, he basically said, yes, it's all been too much, as you'd predicted.
	There's not a path forward for you.
	You know, we'll give you the severance.
	The expectation was I stay for a while till they found my replacement.
	Replacement.
	And I just decided I wanted to leave on my own terms.
	Were you stunned?
	I mean, I know you'd be worried about it, but like.
	I wasn't stunned.
	I was honestly, I was relieved.
	It had been a really difficult two years.
	I was relieved to have an answer.
	I just needed to decide how I wanted to make my exit.
	I wasn't clear.
	I do want to thank Barry Weiss and Common Sense.
	You know, I reached out to her and she was willing to.
	Published something that I wrote and I, you know, thought through how I could leave on my own terms.
	That was important to me that I leave on my own terms.
	She's a warrior.
	She's awesome.
	And she's another, you know, former liberal.
	I don't know actually how she would describe herself today, but she's certainly, you know, closer to being red pilled than she was four or five years ago over issues like this nonsense, you know, and critical race theory and all of it that's made her look at the world in a different way, just like you.
	This is the same CEO who said, you know, Derisively, that you'd been acting like Donald Trump.
	He didn't like that.
	He liked it better when you were openly pro Elizabeth Warren.
Board Meetings And Mask Grievances 00:15:01
	They didn't like that either.
	I mean, they didn't dislike it enough to sort of stop me, but obviously businesses were a little bit nervous about Warren.
	So I'm up against a break, Jen, but what next?
	What's it going to be for you?
	You know, I am super excited.
	I'm looking forward.
	I want to write another book, a memoir about, you know, how to kind of screw up your courage and use your voice and how you have to.
	Keep re upping to do that.
	And I want to, I just opened, started my own production company.
	I'm going to make another documentary.
	Good, good.
	And to those, I mean, you wrote it in your piece, but just final question Do you think Levi abandoned its values?
	I do.
	I do.
	I think inclusiveness includes all voices.
	And this was not an inclusive approach.
	They've got some soul searching to do on their end as well.
	We look forward to your next act and we'll have you back on to promote it too.
	All the best to you.
	Thank you, Megan.
	Nice to meet you.
	Appreciate it.
	Up next, the latest legal tactic to keep mask mandates on.
	There's a new effort underway now to keep masks on our children, even after one state Supreme Court ended the school mandate.
	This is actually happening in state after state, something similar down in Tennessee, and there's more.
	In recent weeks, nearly identical lawsuits have been filed throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania targeting the new mask mandate.
	Optional policies in certain school districts.
	Lawyers accuse these districts of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by making masks optional, saying that they are endangering the lives of our most vulnerable children.
	My next guests have been intimately involved in this fight.
	I want to introduce you to Jay Chadwick Schnee, who's an attorney who battled the state over school mask mandates and is battling.
	Jarrett Coleman is a newly elected school board member in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.
	He's a guy just like you, he's a parent who is.
	Ticked off at his three minute time limits and said, I'm going to run for school board.
	Then you're going to have to listen to me as long as I want to go.
	And Jamie Walker is a mom from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who's been fighting the school mask mandate from day one.
	Chad, Jarrett, Jamie, thank you all so much for being here.
	Jamie, I want to start with you.
	You hated the mask mandates.
	Same.
	You did something about it.
	You in Pennsylvania did something extraordinary last spring when you got the legislature to basically pass a constitutional amendment saying the governor cannot have emergency powers unless we specifically in the legislature give them to him.
	And so it was great.
	All right, that's a win.
	Even though his emergency powers had been taken away, we get to August and he issues a mask mandate.
	So it was like, wait, you don't have the power to do that, sir.
	You don't have the power to do that anymore.
	And let's just start there because that must have been a true moment of elation when you won that particular fight and it was ruled that he did not have the power to institute a mask mandate.
	Yes, it was.
	And our school board voted to actually get rid of masks shortly thereafter.
	So, we assume going into the next school year that we would be mask optional.
	So, this is great because this is an example of the citizenry fighting back and saying, We don't believe you're not a king to the governor.
	You can't do this to us indefinitely unless you have the support of the voters.
	This is, I mean, voters in New York, voters in Connecticut, we're all feeling this at the moment where it's like nobody voted for these policies.
	How can they be in place for two plus years?
	So, you guys did something about it.
	The court says, Governor, you don't have these powers, you can't issue a mask mandate.
	Okay, so great.
	You have a joyful summer thinking when we go back to school, we're not going to have the masks on.
	What happened in August?
	Because I know a lot of machinations took place.
	What happened?
	So, in August, the way Pennsylvania works is we have 67 counties.
	Six counties have a local health department that can create their own guidance for schools.
	So, in Bucks County, our health director, Dr. David Damsker, created guidance for schools that said mask optional.
	So, our school district, Central Buck School District, which is the largest suburban school district in Pennsylvania, decided to go with his guidance that was created on August 15th.
	We thought everything was going to be.
	What was his title again?
	Sorry, Jim, what's his title again?
	He's the director of the Bucks County Health Department.
	He's a board certified public health doctor, which there's maybe one that runs the local health departments.
	Okay, keep going.
	Okay, so we voted.
	Our school district voted on July 27th to follow his guidance and to go back to school using a flu model of mitigation, which means you don't have to wear masks, you don't have to quarantine children, school was going to be basically back to normal.
	The guidance was issued.
	Well, we voted, then they issued guidance, and then on August 31st, our health secretary of Pennsylvania, who was an attorney, Decided to issue a mask mandate, which was then deemed illegal in the Supreme Court.
	Unbelievable.
	So, the health secretary, who I understand is basically a shell for the governor.
	Like this person, unlike the guy you just mentioned, is not a doctor.
	She basically just does what the governor wants her to do.
	Well, yes, she was put in place shortly after our last health director got moved to the White House.
	She's an attorney, she doesn't have any medical experience.
	But after the mask mandate was found to be illegal, she actually resigned.
	Okay, great.
	Bye.
	Don't let the door hit you.
	Okay, so you guys are rolling along, and this guy, Dr. David Damsker, he seems like a straight shooter.
	The guy says, Look, I'm in charge of public health here for Bucks County, and this is what I see.
	And this is an excerpt from what he said At the moment, the numbers are low.
	Serious illness in children is rare.
	And therefore, we're recommending a mask optional policy and targeted and temporary mitigation.
	Totally reasonable.
	He's not saying no masks forever and you can't have masks.
	And we don't care how high the transmission rate is, which, by the way, would be fine with me because masks do nothing.
	But anyway, even to the left, this guy's position should be reasonable.
	But basically, what I understand is they essentially peng shui'd the guy.
	He got disappeared for two plus weeks.
	And then suddenly, The governor's shill, who's a little higher than him on the public health totem pole, handed down a mask mandate.
	For how wide was it?
	Well, so he, Dr. Damsker put out his guidance on August 15th.
	Then all of a sudden, on August 23rd, the guidance mysteriously changed and we never heard from him again.
	And then on all, but the schools in Bucks County were still not going back to putting masks on kids.
	So then on August 31st, that's when Allison Beam, who is no longer works for the state of Pennsylvania, put the mask mandate in place.
	Okay.
	And no one has heard from our health director since then.
	Well, like, do we think he's been, you know, I was only joking about the Peng Shui there, but like, he's okay, right?
	How far did they go?
	He hasn't been able to speak publicly.
	Like, he had a pretty good relationship with our school boards.
	He came to the June.
	School board meeting, and that's what allowed our school board members to vote to get rid of masks because he spoke at our school board meeting.
	So, in my understanding, he had a really good relationship with many of the school board members.
	Then, all of a sudden, no one could have any contact with them again.
	And then, we've put in a lot of right to know requests to find out what actually took place.
	And you can see our county commissioners and the COO of the county directing all the health advice.
	So, they basically took over.
	The health department, in my opinion.
	And you can see there's internal correspondence that you guys have gotten in this lawsuit that we're going to talk about in a minute, where it makes clear that these superintendents are, you know, oh, this is an untenable position.
	You know, the parents are split 50 50 pro mask, anti mask, but we know what's right.
	We know we have to be pro mask.
	We want a mandate.
	If only the governor would give us a mandate.
	And lo and behold, they did get a mandate, even though the public had already said no mandates.
	We passed a whole constitutional amendment so that you couldn't do this to us.
	So they did it anyway.
	They did it anyway.
	I cannot imagine your frustration when they did it anyway.
	Yes, it was very frustrating because the year before last year, I put my children in this private school that followed the original guidance our health director put out in the summer of 2020, and it allowed for children to not wear masks.
	So my children didn't have to wear masks in private school.
	And the private school was totally fine, nothing happened.
	So, after I wanted to put my kids back into the public schools because I moved here for the public schools and everything was supposed to be okay.
	And then they voted to, then the mask mandate came back.
	And school already started in Bucks County.
	We were already in school for a week.
	And then they put the mask mandate back in.
	That's one of the frustrating things about this the ones who are so obsessed with the masking refuse to look at the jurisdictions that haven't required masking for honest feedback about whether the masking is doing any good whatsoever, which brings me, again, we're going to get to the lawsuits in a second.
	But that brings me to you, Jarrett.
	So, you're a dad in a different district.
	And how old are your kids?
	I have a well, thanks again for having us on.
	I really appreciate the opportunity to share our story, which is something that's resonating with everyone.
	It's not just unique to us, everyone's fighting this.
	My side of a three and a half year old son and a one and a half year old daughter who will be going to this school district if they can get their act together.
	But if they continue to act the way they're doing, I'll be sending my kids other places and I'll be recommending that others do the same.
	So you start showing up at the school board meetings as a tax paying citizen who's got two young kids headed for this district.
	And what was your frustration when you saw the way these things were being run?
	Yeah, my frustration was immediately, and before I say anything, I'm Supposed to make it very clear to you and to your listeners that everything I say today is only a reflection of my own beliefs and not that of Parkland School District.
	They're very well, let's just say that.
	I think what became clear to me as a taxpayer and as a parent, when you would go to these board meetings and you'd approach the board, your place to air your grievance or your concerns, the board would look at you.
	They'd apparently hear what you say, but they wouldn't even provide comment.
	They wouldn't even reply to parents.
	They just stared at you almost as if they're looking right through you.
	And so, can I tell you the satisfaction that I have been given now?
	Where they can no longer look down and through me.
	Instead, they're now looking across the stage at me.
	And now they're forced to hear the community.
	It's just, it's apparent that these boards have become complete rubber stamps for the administration.
	And if that's the case, I'm not even really sure why we have a board to begin with.
	So, how many members are on the board?
	So, you decided to run for school board, you got on the school board.
	So, yay.
	You're newly elected.
	How long have you been elected and going to the board meetings for?
	So, I was elected in the past fall here in the November election.
	There were some issues about a challenge in the area.
	That's another story.
	And so my seating actually as a board member was delayed, which is just hilarious.
	But I was finally sat in later in December into January.
	And so now I'm sitting on the board forever.
	I'm sure your fellow board members are like, how the hell did he get on?
	Who let, who, why would the board tear it off?
	And Megan, that's the thing.
	They don't, they don't get it.
	They're completely like amazed.
	And it's like, that's the thing.
	It's, these are not, it's not just like I have these feelings, it's everyone.
	It's everyone out there has the same thoughts, and the numbers show it.
	When people go to the polls, people are upset with what's going on.
	They're sick and tired of being gaslighted, and it just continues.
	And until we take back the boards, flip the balance, and retake our schools, this is going to be a struggle everywhere.
	So, how many people are on the board?
	We have a nine person board.
	And how many people are on your side?
	I'm the one on my side.
	It's eight to one.
	About 9,000 community members, I'd say.
	Yes.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	So, in the community, I mean, I imagine that the politics.
	Are reflected in the community that is majority Democrat, which tends to mean, well, not so much anymore, but sort of far left Democrat, which means pro mask mandate for the most part.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, it's a vocal minority that show up with fears that all the children are going to die from COVID.
	You know, just they're very vocal and they're against mask optional policies in the area.
	But look, I mean, now we know the data that the science doesn't support their argument.
	It's falling apart now.
	And yet, they still cling out of this fear or this obsession with this virus and with these masking policies.
	Yeah, we've seen it.
	We love David Zweig, who's written great pieces for New York Magazine.
	I'm sure you guys have seen him in The Atlantic, taking a hard look at these so called studies that they claim support the masking of children.
	And he's just completely debunked them.
	I mean, they're just junk.
	And the one, the biggest one, which I know, Jared, you mentioned when you went off at the school board meeting, was by the CDC in Georgia, you know, that showed of 90,000 children that the masks do nothing.
	They do nothing.
	And the CDC turned around and promptly began ignoring that in favor of these other BS studies that they claim support masks, but in fact, Do not.
	So, oh, and by the way, now he's getting hit by some left wing publication that nobody reads, and I choose not to publicize here because they're sad.
	These crazy mask enthusiasts, again, they're sad that their masks are going away.
	And so they want to lash out at anybody who's starting to sort of win this battle, namely the children.
	It's the children.
	It's not because of you, it's not because of David Zwig.
	It's because the children need to have this garment taken off of their damn faces so they can learn properly.
	Right.
	And I think you bring up a great point.
	Look, like I'm an airline pilot by trade.
	I'm often put into situations where I don't, I may not know the right answer.
Plaintiffs Who Shouldn't Send Kids To School 00:15:50
	And I start determining the right answer by making my team bigger and relying on experts.
	And as we started to, I had doctors in the area sending me these studies showing the lack of statistical probability that was significant that these masks, these cloth masks, actually do something.
	And when presented with this data, it's just a continual stonewall again.
	Look, If we're not making the children wear hospital grade respirators, we're not making them wear N95 masks.
	We're talking about cloth masks that are not fitted.
	The N95 masks are not, there's no one from OSHA sitting there fitting these on the children's faces.
	If the data supported masking, we wouldn't be having this discussion, but we have to follow the science.
	It is time that we follow the science, and it's about time we move on from this.
	Okay, so you're sort of fighting it on the political front.
	Like, I'm going to get on that school board, I'm going to try to change policy.
	And Jamie's a mom who's trying to fight it from the parent level, trying to convince school boards and everybody around her to unmask the children and do what she has to do to move the kids, do whatever you have to do to save the kids.
	And Chad, you're a lawyer who's been, you know, sort of the legal muscle trying to help out too.
	All these things are important in the fight.
	But before we get to the ADA lawsuits, which, you know, you're on the opposite side of these, but on the ADA, before we get to that, so we're at the point in the story where we've sort of tried to defang the governor and his ability to just through emergency powers, you know, by edict.
	Impose masks.
	Okay, successful.
	Then you get the local health commissioner, at least in Jamie's district, to say, We don't need the masks.
	The case numbers are low in August.
	Masks optional.
	Okay.
	And he gets overruled by the state, basically the governor's shill, who says, No, we're doing a mandate.
	Notwithstanding the fact we have no emergency powers, we're doing a mandate.
	So now we're one step forward, two steps back.
	And then a lawsuit was filed.
	And Chad, why don't you tell us what the court was?
	Was it the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that ultimately ruled on this?
	It was, Megan.
	And just to take a step back for a second, over the summer, every school district was making its own independent decisions about what they wanted to do with respect to masking.
	And they heard, as you might imagine, loud and clear from parents on both sides of the issues.
	Thomas Jefferson once said that the government closest to the people serves the people best.
	And you had independent political subdivisions making decisions about what to do with masking.
	And the governor came in and said, I don't like those decisions they made.
	So we're going to issue an edict.
	That required masking in all public and private schools within Pennsylvania.
	So, we brought an action with a number of folks to challenge the governor's authority to issue this mask mandate because we believed it was outside the statutory authority put forth in Pennsylvania law and regulations.
	We argued the case in front of the Commonwealth Court, which is a statewide court here in Pennsylvania, won the case, and then it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
	And the Supreme Court agreed with our position as well.
	That's the highest court in Pennsylvania.
	And so currently, the law of the land is that the Secretary of Health and the governor do not have the ability to issue a mask mandate outside of a disaster declaration.
	Yes, because of that constitutional amendment.
	Correct.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I mean, it seems very clear that that's the law.
	And it's funny because I know in your lawsuit, you guys have given us some of the papers.
	You've seen some of the back and forth with the sort of lower public health officials like, well, we've got to fight.
	We've got to fight.
	Oh, well, look, there's this one solicitor in this one jurisdiction who's saying the governor doesn't have these powers, you know, and he's going to come after us.
	He's going to say if the governor issues a mask mandate, you know, it's never going to be upheld, that it's unlawful.
	How can we get rid of that guy?
	No, no, no.
	He was right.
	That guy was right.
	There's no power anymore for the governor to do this or his emissaries.
	And the mask mandate is no longer constitutional in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania because the Supreme Court has said it was unlawfully issued.
	That's the state of the law right now.
	So, never to be silenced, those who love the masks are now choosing a different tactic.
	And my years practicing law tell me it is indeed a tactic.
	Perhaps there's a child or two or a few who are genuinely immunocompromised who have concerned parents.
	But It's too coordinated right now, Chad, for me to believe that these 1,000 plus students they're claiming are immunocompromised.
	And lawsuit after lawsuit and jurisdiction after jurisdiction are popping up claiming unless the mask mandate is in place where everyone is forced to wear one, these kids are in danger of dying.
	And therefore, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the districts have no choice but to reimpose mask mandates and keep them in place indefinitely.
	Is that where we are?
	Right.
	I think you're right.
	And just on the prior litigation, really quickly, one of my greatest badges of honor was that the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story that said, called my lawsuit, my challenge to the governor's authority, innovative, but ultimately probably not likely to succeed.
	I'm glad we proved them wrong.
	But with respect to the current state of the law, you're right.
	You have parents out there now, they're proceeding anonymously, so we don't even know who they are.
	And they're suing individual school districts, arguing that my immunocompromised child cannot receive or attend school in person unless everyone is required to wear a mask.
	That is the reasonable accommodation that they're seeking.
	And that's the reasonable accommodation.
	And just to make that clear, just to make that clear so the Americans with Disabilities Act requires schools andor employers, but it requires them to make a reasonable accommodation for somebody's disability.
	So that's why we have handicap ramps, for example.
	You know, you can't.
	Have a school where the kids cannot get in.
	Now, does it require that every single facility in the entire school be handicap accessible?
	Not necessarily.
	It has to be something that the law would deem reasonable, that the reasonable person would say, yeah, that makes sense.
	And so they're trying to use that to say, what's reasonable here?
	The only thing they say that's reasonable is a mandate that every single person in the building be masked.
	That's absolutely right.
	And that really is kind of at the heart of where these cases are right now.
	So, for example, In Upper St. Clair in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh, they made the argument that, hey, we've installed HEPA filtration systems.
	We have the plexiglass.
	We have the hand sanitizing.
	We have all the other mitigation measures out there, except for masking.
	And the federal district court out there said, we have virtual school.
	And the federal district court out there said, well, we agree, this is not, you don't have to require universal masking as a reasonable accommodation.
	But by contrast, you have the North Allegheny School District that said, well, your reasonable accommodation is you can just be remote learning.
	And the district court there, again, both in the Western District of Pennsylvania, said that you needed to require universal masking as a reasonable accommodation.
	That's like.
	That's crazy.
	I mean, the thought that every child in the school has to be masked in order to accommodate anonymous plaintiffs who claim their children will be severely injured or die if that's not the outcome.
	And this jumped out at me out of one of the complaints.
	All the complaints are identical, it's clearly orchestrated.
	But one of them alleges when parents permit their children to opt out of mask wearing, medically fragile children with disabilities, and indeed all children, Are subjected to serious illness or even death as a result of COVID 19 being spread through unmasked breathing, coughing, and sneezing.
	There's so much wrong with that allegation.
	But the first thing that jumped out at me, Chad, was are we really going to pretend that these two cent cloth masks that the kids don't wear properly, that are as thin as paper, are all that's standing between these thousand plus children in Pennsylvania and death?
	And if that's true, what kind of irresponsible parent would have sent that immunocompromised child to school ever one day prior to today?
	Yeah, and I would agree too.
	And the other thing to look at is the plaintiffs.
	While they're anonymous, they do list their medical conditions.
	One of the plaintiffs in the North Allegheny case, their disability is ADHD.
	That doesn't really seem to have anything to do with masking or why my fellow peers or classmates should have to wear a mask.
	But you're absolutely right.
	I mean, I think the ultimate question is there hasn't been any hearing that I'm aware of in the United States about the efficacy of a cloth mask.
	And I think it's about time that a judge schedules a hearing and takes evidence and has testimony about whether these cloth masks actually work.
	Is the mantra that my mask protects you and your mask protects me, is that actually correct?
	It certainly is not in today's day and age.
	And we know that from Omicron.
	And that's one of the questions I have for you, which is how does that change?
	You know, the dynamic right now, since we know it's incredibly spreadable with or without the mask, with or without the vaccine.
	And so, does that change the positioning in this case?
	We're going to pick it up there.
	And I'm, after this, I'd love to ask you some of the hardest questions.
	Like, I'm going to steel man the other side's position and see if you think, you know, it holds water, right?
	Because that's a better debate than just all of us agreeing.
	You know, Jamie, let me just go back to you for one second because the, the, The sort of place we got here that got us here is frustrated parents, right?
	Frustrated parents who are seeing what's happening to the children.
	And Pennsylvania being a purple state, it's gone blue more recently, but it's pretty purple in terms of its makeup.
	What would you say the divide is in terms of pro mask mandate, anti?
	I think in the beginning, when the last school year, it was 50 50.
	But going into this next school year, the one we're in now, most people did not want masks.
	They wanted their kids to get back to normal.
	Because when they dropped the mask mandate the end of June, I think it took one or two days, and basically all the kids were not wearing masks.
	And do you talk to, like, I don't know what your politics are, but do you talk to more left leaning friends and where are they on it?
	So, a lot of my left leaning friends, I feel like I don't talk to that much anymore.
	When this all started, I made some new friends.
	Yeah.
	Yes, you made new friends.
	This is happening.
	Oh my God, this is like a big story, I think, in the COVID weirdness.
	Just like the end of friendships, but also the beginning of new friendships.
	Yes, I joined a Facebook group back in May of 2020 called reopenbucks.com, and we all just became really close and we kind of fought this together.
	We put in a lot of right to know requests.
	We spoke at board meetings.
	We just, we put a lot of timelines together to help figure out what took place in our county and how we got to where we are.
	It's been so, such a legal zigzag.
	I mean, you must be getting legal whiplash out there like victories, no, they're gone.
	More victories, no, they're gone.
	And it's not just Pennsylvania.
	As I said, I've got a lot of viewers and listeners who've been writing into me about something similar happening in Tennessee, where they're just, At their wits' end down there, similar situations, people now using the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, to try to undo court orders and other measures supported by the citizenry to take the masks off.
	So they're trying to snatch away the victory after it's already clearly been handed down.
	All right, now, Chad, I want to ask you this about the lawsuit.
	So this is, when I mentioned 1,000 alleged students who are disabled, that's just one district.
	I mean, according to these lawsuits, you're going to have.
	Thousands and thousands of disabled children all across Pennsylvania who could die if they go to school without the other kids wearing this mask.
	And nobody in Pennsylvania is even proposing the N95 masks like they do in LA.
	So it's like, it's always going to be the tiny little piece of paper in front of the kid's face, not properly worn.
	Again, if you're a parent who actually thinks your child might die if the other kids aren't perfectly masked, you really shouldn't be sending your child to school.
	That actually is crazy to do.
	If my kid actually might face death, if another kid didn't have a good mask on, he would not be going to public school.
	It would be sad, but it wouldn't be happening.
	Okay, so here's what they argue in part chat.
	They say every step necessary should be followed to prevent the spread of COVID, which requires universal masking.
	They're saying it is a necessary step, and that in order to prevent the spread, it requires universal masking, and that anything less would not be reasonable, right?
	So, how do you come out attacking that?
	Well, I think the reason why the CDC guidance is called guidance is because it's not an order.
	It's not a mandate.
	It's not a statute.
	It's not a regulation.
	It is not binding on any school district or any other entity for that matter.
	The problem is that there are a host of different mitigation efforts that can be done and have been done by school districts out there to help stop the spread of the SARS CoV 2 virus and prevent the infections of COVID 19.
	It cannot be the only reasonable accommodation out there because there are other things that have done.
	And the other aspect, too, is you can take the same legal argument that is being made in these cases and apply them for students that have a hearing disability or perhaps a speech pathology issue where they need to see lips in order to understand speech and help articulate speech sounds.
	And you can make the argument that their reasonable accommodation is instead that no one should be allowed to wear masks.
	No peers and no teachers should be allowed to wear masks because otherwise, these students with hearing disabilities and speech pathology issues cannot see the lips of their fellow students and teachers.
	Would the law recognize that the risk on the one hand is alleged death or severe illness versus the risk on your hand being difficulty understanding or being understood, right?
	Will it weigh the relative risks in figuring out what's reasonable?
	Well, there hasn't yet been a dueling lawsuit where both have happened in the same school district.
	So, I do think there are different harms being alleged.
	I will note that actually, with Jamie and the Central Box School District, there was a federal lawsuit that was filed along the same lines that we're seeing here today.
	And the judge, after about three months of litigation, said, you know what?
	All the harms that are being alleged here by the plaintiffs, none of it has happened in the three months this litigation has gone on.
	And I think that's very much what's going to happen with these as well.
	Okay.
	So, not only do they have the CDC on their side, but they have the American Academy of Pediatrics, which all along has been advocating the most severe COVID restrictions.
	And here as well is saying, continues to say, the children should remain masked.
	To me, it's stomach turning.
Federal Lawsuit On Universal Masking 00:14:01
	I have to be honest.
	I just feel like they've totally abandoned their duty.
	Their duty to children to see, to look at health, the true health of children.
	They're like the teachers' union, you know, like a group of people, professionals, who their main goal ought to be the well being of children.
	And yet, everything you hear from the American Academies of Pediatrics could have come out of Joe Biden's mouth.
	It seems politically bent.
	Okay, sorry, that was my own take.
	I'm trying to steel man, not straw man.
	But you do have the American Academy of Pediatrics against you.
	So, how persuasive do you think the judge is likely to find that?
	Well, the American Academy of Pediatrics is really just involved as.
	As an amicus in a lot of these cases to raise that position.
	That really goes to the efficacy of masking versus whether it is a reasonable accommodation or not.
	So, you know, perhaps a judge, I'm sure some judges would be more influenced than others, and we'll have to see how that goes.
	But I think the important thing is that, you know, you have the availability of these N95s and other things that a student who truly is immunocompromised can wear an N95 to help protect themselves.
	They can choose to do remote online learning if they're.
	Significantly scared about the possibility of obtaining COVID 19.
	Okay, but this is where this is an interesting tactic by them, and it's actually a good one.
	They use our side's argument against us, saying, You've made the argument that remote learning is awful for the past two years.
	And finally, we now agree.
	Now we agree with you remote learning does nothing and it's not equal.
	And so that is not a reasonable accommodation for these children.
	Not only that, but their argument goes a step further and says that if you require students with disabilities to work remotely for their schooling, that is a form of segregation.
	And so, therefore, you are segregating disabled students, which really denies them the ability to have learning in the least restrictive environment out there.
	But I think what really is the essential component of these cases is that they're really questioning the denial of a free and appropriate public education under the individuals.
	Disabilities and Education Act, not under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, as they're arguing.
	Why that's important is because there are exhaustion requirements for the IDEA.
	So you have to exhaust your administrative remedies first before you can run into court to try to get a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.
	And they've kind of artfully worded and crafted these complaints in order to avoid that exhaustion requirement.
	What would that require?
	What would they have to do?
	They have to interact with the school.
	They have to set forth what the disabilities are, they have to seek a reasonable accommodation.
	There has to be an interactive process, just like there kind of is under the ADA with respect to an employee employer situation.
	All right.
	Well, let me ask you now like, Jared, if they do have to interact with the school, right?
	And then somebody comes to you and says, I don't know, you can take the ADHD pretty easily and say, no, no, we don't recognize that as a comorbidity of COVID.
	But let's say you know you've got a kid who's got really bad asthma and actually does face a serious increased risk from COVID.
	What do you do about that?
	Like, what do you think as a school board member now you would do with that kid?
	I think, and I've said this before, I think that to these concerned.
	Concerned parents like, and I've said this before, you know, I urge you to remind you that the CDC has strict guidance outlining, you know, what you should do at your home to protect these individuals.
	You know, you need to do everything that the CDC requires, then, you know, if you're at a higher risk for severe illness from COVID, this was from their website that you should get a COVID vaccine.
	You should limit contact with others and people as much as possible.
	In fact, they're even telling you, so what you're limiting by the CDC basically say you maybe should consider remote learning.
	Wash your hands as often as possible, avoid close contact six feet with others outside your household.
	Clean and disinfect frequently, touch services, and avoid all unnecessary travel.
	These are, per the CDC recommended guidelines, of what you can do to protect those who are at higher risk of contracting the virus.
	And it's not a common, it's not a pleasant discussion to have, but I think we have to start thinking what is the acute damage for some children to be out of school versus the large impact of damaging 10,000 children per district and what we're doing.
	I mean, to put this into perspective, Megan, I heard from a parent the other day, their child's in second grade.
	To this, their whole career in school over these past two years, they don't know what the faces of their classmates look like.
	That's me.
	So, that's my sense of humor too.
	You don't have a heart, and we need to wake up about that.
	I mean, I tell you, you have to do everything the CDC requires.
	And exactly as you said, Megan, if you really trust that cloth mask to protect your child, I mean, I just don't know.
	I think you have some reevaluation to do, but that's just my opinion.
	Yeah.
	No, I agree with that.
	I mean, it's.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	And I would just say, it.
	There's something a bit insidious here, too, that not many people want to speak about.
	But all of these committees and agencies that are making these decisions don't operate in sunshine largely as required, that I would think, by the Sunshine Act in Pennsylvania.
	For example, in certain districts, we have a health and safety committee made up of doctors and teachers and principals, and they hold meetings where they then, the result of these meetings, is official recommendations and advice on official agency business that the board then votes on.
	Even as a board director, I can't find out what they spoke about and who these individuals were, which doctors they were.
	And so we want to, you know, we're going to unmask the kids.
	We also have to unmask the government here.
	And we need to, they need to be transparent with what they're doing.
	Well said.
	So, Chad, one of the things that's annoying about them filing lawsuits as John and Jane Doe's and Child Doe's is it's very difficult to find out exactly what we're dealing with here.
	Because one of the things I question when they're saying everyone has to be masked or my child could die is are these children in a hermetically sealed compartment when they're not at school?
	Do they have any activities outside of the school setting?
	Because that would be one of the very first things I imagine you, as the lawyer, would hire a PI and start looking into.
	And you issue a discovery request saying, let's see all activities that little juniors involved in and risks that you've been taking even prior to COVID, because there's pneumonia and there's common colds and there's flu and there's all sorts of things that go through the air.
	So, right now, at least, you're hampered in defense because of that.
	Right.
	And in North Allegheny, For example, there's a population of about 50,000 people there.
	And this lawsuit's brought by three people, which is kind of breathtaking.
	You know, I think you're right.
	You know, there's really no proximate cause here, you know, not to throw too much legal out there, but how do you make the connection that someone could contract it at school instead of the grocery store, the mall, the movie theater?
	You know, those in Pennsylvania, all those facilities are open and you do not have to wear a mask in any of them.
	Certainly can choose to, but you don't have to.
	Right.
	So you're going to keep the kid.
	Does your kid ever go with you, mom, when you go to the grocery store?
	Do you let him go out to a public park?
	Do you let him, like, what do you let him do?
	Because you cannot make the entire society.
	Wear masks forever because of your child's vulnerability.
	I was just talking to my friend.
	She's a doctor.
	She was telling me her child has a very bad dairy allergy.
	He could actually die if he has dairy.
	Does she require, does she go into our school and say you can't serve any dairy?
	She doesn't.
	She's educated her child.
	She's educated the child's teachers and the faculty that they understand what needs to be done to keep this child safe.
	You got to make sure if a snack comes into the classroom that it doesn't have dairy.
	You got to remind the other parents, like, if you send something in, just know that.
	There's one kid who can't have it.
	Fine.
	I think reasonable parents in a community are willing to do that for another family.
	Like, I don't have to send in the snack with dairy, or I'm happy to send one that doesn't have the dairy, right?
	Like, normal parents in a community together will do that for one another.
	But, Chad, the thing that the administrators are going to come back with is we don't have peanuts in a lot of schools right now.
	And that is not because we have thousands of kids with peanut allergies, it's because we have a few.
	And it's so potentially lethal to them.
	That we've decided to live a different way.
	And your opponents are going to say, this is that case.
	Right.
	Well, I do like to say that one of the greatest victims of COVID 19 has been common sense.
	That argument about the peanut allergy really kind of assumes that everyone is a transmitter and has COVID 19 and it's just walking around infecting everyone.
	In the peanut allergy case, you have people that have peanut allergies and there is a reasonable accommodation provided for them.
	But here, you can't just assume that everyone has COVID 19 and is a carrier.
	You know, it didn't work during the, you know, that would be a problem during the AIDS epidemic, for example.
	We can't just assume everyone has a disease and treat them accordingly.
	And the one way masking, I mean, we're hearing more and more about that, Jamie.
	Like, why isn't there more emphasis on the effectiveness of N95 masks versus cloth masks for those who are immunocompromised?
	Yeah, that's what I think the immunocompromised children should do is wear the N95 masks if they, if The CDC is saying those are the masks that work.
	I don't know why there's no studies on this or why they're not suggesting this.
	Because the thing is, I mean, Jared, I'll put this one to you.
	If we accept the premise that everyone must be masked in order to protect these unnamed, unidentified children, it could go on forever.
	How long is that?
	It could be all the way through 12th grade.
	Who's to say?
	I mean, we don't know how prevalent COVID is going to be, the next variant.
	Now, one of the goals was hopefully to get it down to the point where it would more resemble the common cold.
	Than the killer virus.
	And Omicron for the young certainly did that.
	But I mean, if you take it to its extreme, you know, if you just look at case numbers, we don't know.
	Case numbers could go back up.
	They could stay back up.
	Maybe it's very mild, but not for certain children.
	Why not straight through, all the way through?
	Masks forever.
	Right.
	And if you really wanted to be impartial and just look at the data, it's a fluid situation.
	When the science tells us to go mask optional, we go mask optional.
	If there was a huge uptake in cases and the And it was spreading everywhere.
	And when you talk about like the peanut allergy with Chad, and we start to talk about, well, the mortality rate, well, let's, we have the data on the mortality rate for children with COVID.
	We know this.
	So why aren't we actually looking at that data?
	You know, if we don't put an end to it now, it will never end.
	What we should be doing is saying COVID right now has calmed down.
	We don't know what the future holds.
	That's fine.
	We need to show that we can, you know, independently and objectively look at data, make a change to our masking.
	And if we're in another situation at a different time and the data change, Maybe we move back into masking, but maybe we use masks that are actually effective.
	And just something that I think is interesting.
	I'm often really attacked on this at the school board by people in the community that say it's your obsession with choice.
	Over responsibility.
	And to them, I say, you know, you have the right words.
	They're just in the wrong order.
	For us, we have the responsibility to ensure choice for our children over your obsession with this virus.
	So I also think, I'm sorry, you can also look in Pennsylvania at Central Bucks School District.
	We are the largest suburban school district.
	We are mask optional and everything is fine.
	I don't know why there's not more emphasis on Bucks County.
	We have over 75%.
	Of our children are mask optional in the county of Bucks.
	Most of the kids are, three quarters of our children are mask optional.
	And the county right next to us, Montgomery County, one of the ADA lawsuits was filed.
	That's 25 minutes from my house.
	Why don't they, why didn't the judge say what's going on in Bucks County?
	It's working.
	The children don't have to wear masks.
	Yeah, that's why they don't emphasize it because it's working.
	If it weren't working, you'd hear a lot more about it from the media and everyone else following this.
	So, Chad, last piece of this.
	They write in there in this one example lawsuit the necessity for masking is greater now than ever.
	Okay.
	And that the schools have an obligation to ensure the safety of the students.
	Your response to that?
	Yeah, I think there was a time at the very beginning of this when we were dealing with a lot of unknowns and everything was very fluid and changing on a day to day basis, that masking may have been an important thing to consider at that point.
	But now we've lived with COVID for.
	Two years.
	It's been, I think, almost the two year anniversary of two weeks to stop the spread or to slow the flatten the curve, right?
	You know, I think we're in a position where the numbers are going down and it's not spreading in the school like everyone fears it will.
	I know you've had a split in decisions out in Pennsylvania.
	Some courts have gone one way, some courts have gone the other.
	So it'll go up and get decided probably by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
	That'll affect everybody in the state.
	And we're seeing it bubble up.
	You know, here, there, and everywhere.
	This actually could wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court potentially.
	And so it's a good thing that we have a little bit more of a conservative bent at right now.
	Although, I don't know.
	Unmasking, I'm just not sure about the Supreme Court.
	It's full of a bunch of old people.
	Just saying, like, they seemed pretty cautious.
How The Legal Battle Plays Out 00:00:59
	And we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.
	But good luck, Chad.
	I appreciate it.
	Jarrett, you as well.
	And Jamie, thanks for fighting the good fight.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Tomorrow, a fascinating thinker and best selling.
	Author Arthur Brooks is going to be here.
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Chapters

00:00:15 Fighting Back Over COVID Restrictions
00:03:08 The Seat That Leads To CEOs
00:07:13 Tenacity After Getting Knocked Down
00:13:20 Advocacy For Public School Children
00:28:40 Escalating Tensions With Leadership
00:41:59 Leaving On My Own Terms
00:45:44 Board Meetings And Mask Grievances
01:00:45 Plaintiffs Who Shouldn't Send Kids To School
01:16:36 Federal Lawsuit On Universal Masking
01:30:38 How The Legal Battle Plays Out