Atheist Lawyer Hassled by Sheriff Grady Judd in Polk County Files a Lawsuit Against Him

EllenBeth Wachs, the Atheists of Florida's twice-jailed legal coordinator, filed a federal lawsuit today against Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd alleging her recent arrests by his agency are retaliation against her non-religious views.

Wachs, a Lakeland resident and a retired lawyer from Pennsylvania, is seeking an injunction to stop new investigations, arrests, citations and complaints by the Sheriff's Office as a result of her “assertion of non-religious, atheist viewpoint in the predominantly Christian-oriented Polk County,” court papers say.

Her attorney, Lawrence Walters of Altamonte Springs, filed the lawsuit on her behalf.

A portion of the suit lists ways Judd expresses his Christian leanings as sheriff, including mentioning Bible scripture in an agency newsletter.

While the actions “seem innocent in isolation, they point to an obvious and deeply-ingrained tradition of Christianity within the agencies and officials overseen” by Judd, Walters writes, adding: “The atheist, Jew, Muslim, or other non-Christian who reads (Judd's) newsletters receives a clear message — ‘you are not one of us.'”

Wachs and the Tampa-based atheist non-profit first began to tangle with Judd last winter after he uprooted the Polk County Jail's basketball hoops and donated them to local churches.

The group sent him a cease and desist letter, calling the donation unconstitutional, and Wachs made multiple public records requests in an attempt to find whether Judd used any public money during the donation.

This year, deputies have arrested Wachs on two separate occasions.

In March, deputies searched her home and jailed her on a charge of illegally posing as a lawyer. They also jailed her in May and accused her of simulating sex sounds from inside her home while within earshot of a neighbor's 10-year-old son.

Deputies said she made the noises in an attempt to make the boy stop playing basketball outside her house.

Later that month, deputies charged her with possession of marijuana, alleging they found the drug in a safe confiscated from her home.

Among the suit's claims is that a search warrant for Wachs home was overbroad and general, allowing deputies to seize items related to litigation and other materials protected the First Amendment.

The suit also says that a detective attended a civil hearing on an injunction Wachs' neighbors sought related to the alleged sexual sounds she had made at home.

The detective arranged a meeting with the family immediately after, “seizing the opportunity to continue his campaign of harassment against” Wachs, which Walters alleges is “misusing the state criminal law enforcement process.”