by Kerry Dougherty
Amidst the cacophony of leftist celebrations Friday — the high fives, the gloating — over an Arlington County Circuit Court judge’s ruling that the forced masking of school children can continue in Virginia, one important wrinkle went unexplored by the mainstream media.
Once again, only Luke Rosiak, a reporter for The Daily Wire, had the curiosity to dig a little deeper.
That’s when he discovered that it appears the judge’s husband may be employed by one of the plaintiffs in the case.
If so, she never should have heard this case.
It appears that Judge Louise DiMatteo is married to one Mike Megargee, who’s listed as a current science teacher at Wakefield High School in Arlington County. The Arlington County School Board — his employer — is one of the plaintiffs in the case.
Unless the couple has recently uncoupled and none of the family income originates with the school district, this situation would seem to present a big, honking conflict of interest for the judge.
Remember, judges are expected to recuse themselves from cases to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.
Not that it would have made much difference in the outcome.
Arlington in the heart of Northern Virginia is a hotbed of liberals, and the judges there are nominated by the local delegation of Democrats and elected by the General Assembly. As soon as this lawsuit was filed in that jurisdiction, many of us predicted exactly this outcome.
For reasons that still escape me, so-called liberals are the strongest supporters of mindless government mandates and fiats that deprive citizens of their civil liberties. It wasn’t always this way.
Back to the case. This is just the beginning. The Youngkin administration will appeal the ruling and hopefully higher courts will return common sense to the commonwealth.
If not, State Sen. Chap Petersen — a Democrat — has pledged to join with Republicans to find a legislation fix for this inhumane treatment of Virginia’s school children.
