Moms for Liberty co-founder asked to resign from school board amid sex scandal
The co-founder of the prominent parental rights organization Moms for Liberty has been asked to resign from her position on a Florida school board amid a sex scandal involving her and her husband, who is chair of the Florida Republican Party.
Bridget Ziegler, elected to the Sarasota County Board of Education in 2022, was asked to resign by the other four members in a nonbinding resolution Tuesday night. The board members cited "recent occurrences" that involve Ziegler "that have become public as a result of a law enforcement investigation."
An affidavit obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability revealed that Ziegler had previously engaged in a three-way sexual encounter with her husband, Christian Ziegler, and another woman.
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According to the affidavit, the trio was scheduled to meet for another group sexual encounter at the unnamed woman's home on Oct. 2, but the woman backed out upon learning that Bridget Ziegler was unable to make it.
The woman alleges that Christian Ziegler showed up at her place anyway and raped her. Christian Ziegler has maintained his innocence and insists that the encounter was consensual.
The resolution approved by the Sarasota County School Board Tuesday maintained that "the continued service by Bridget Ziegler as the District 1 School Board member on the School Board of Sarasota County, Florida would cause an irreparably harmful distraction to the School Board's ability to fulfill its critical Constitutional mission of operating, controlling, and supervising the various Sarasota County public schools."
"The School Board of Sarasota County, Florida lacks authority to remove Bridget Ziegler as School Board member but can resort to informally recommending that she voluntarily resign her position as School Board member by non‐binding resolution," the resolution states.
As The Christian Post previously reported, Ziegler was elected to the Sarasota County Board of Education in August 2022 as one of three members who "flipped the school board from a 3-2 liberal majority to 4-1 conservative."
Ziegler, who co-founded Moms for Liberty, has declined to voluntarily step down from her post. After Tuesday's resolution vote, Ziegler said she was "disappointed" but struck a defiant tone.
“As people may know, I serve on another public board and this issue did not come up and we were able to forge ahead with the business of the board," Ziegler said at the meeting, according to The Herald-Tribune, referring to her position on the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.
In a statement released last week by Moms for Liberty Co-Founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, Moms for Liberty praised Ziegler as "an avid warrior for parental rights across the country" while stressing that she "resigned from her role as co-founder with Moms for Liberty within a month of our launch in January of 2021, nearly three years ago."
At the same time, the organization asserted that "we have been truly shaken to read of the serious, criminal allegations against Christian Ziegler."
"We believe any allegation of sexual assault should be taken seriously and fully investigated," the Moms for Liberty co-founders said.
Additionally, Descovich and Justice condemned their "opponents who have spewed hateful vitriol over the last several days."
"We reject your attacks. We will continue to empower ALL parents to build relationships that ensure the survival of our nation and a thriving education," they vowed. "We are laser-focused on fundamental parental rights, and that mission is and always will be bigger than any one person."
Moms for Liberty is one of several parental rights organizations that have emerged on the national stage in the past few years amid rising concerns nationwide about parents' rights as LGBT ideologies and elements of critical race theory have been incorporated into teachings by some school districts and teachers.
The organization supports school board candidates that align with its mission of "unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government."
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Moms for Liberty endorsed over 270 school board candidates nationwide. The group endorsed over 500 candidates throughout 2022, including those running in school board races before the November general election. Moms for Liberty has reported a success rate of greater than 50% nationally in last year's elections, stating that "these election victories flipped more than 17 school boards to parental rights-supportive majorities."
The issue of parental rights has gained renewed attention in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, where parents and community members have descended on school board meetings to express outrage about the presence of sexually explicit material in school libraries as well as the school curriculum. Moms for Liberty's activism on behalf of parental rights has also opened it up to criticism from the political left.
Earlier this year, the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center included Moms for Liberty on its "hate map," profiling organizations it claims are discriminatory "hate groups." The organization derided Moms for Liberty as part of "an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities."
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
