The final charge against former Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler was dropped Thursday.
The motion to dismiss the charge had been brought by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares in December of last year.
Ziegler was charged with falsely publishing in relation to a statement he made during a livestreamed school board meeting on June 22, 2021.
The charge stemmed from Ziegler’s comment, “To my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our bathrooms,” claiming the school division didn’t have a record of a pair of sexual assaults’ carried out by the same student.
Other evidence, the filing said, including a special grand jury report, “sheds light on the Commonwealth’s factual allegations in the instant indictment.”
“The Commonwealth is satisfied that justice has been done in the Defendant’s cases,” the filing said.
A jury previously found Ziegler not guilty of punishing an employee for attending court.
The Loudoun County judge who dropped the charge is still considering a motion by Ziegler’s attorney to set aside his misdemeanor conviction. Ziegler was supposed to be sentenced on that charge last month.
Back in September, a jury found Ziegler guilty of retaliating against a former special education teacher. He faces up to a year behind bars and a $2,500 fine.
In December of 2022, the Loudoun County School Board voted unanimously during a closed session to fire Ziegler, just one day after a special grand jury report criticized the school system’s response to the bathroom assaults.
Last October, the family of a teenage girl who was sexually assaulted in a Loudoun County high school bathroom in 2021 — which set off a firestorm of political controversy — filed a $30 million civil rights lawsuit against the county school board for allegedly not following Title IX protocol.
WTOP reported in December that the charge had been dropped, according to court documents.
WTOP’s Scott Gelman and Alicia Abelson contributed to this report.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
