A contentious back-and-forth online between a Baltimore-area teacher and a Moms for Liberty leader has sparked a defamation lawsuit.

In the filing, Alexa Sciuto, an educator who creates satirical social media posts on issues like LGBTQ rights and book bans, accuses a group of Republican state delegates and advocates of conspiring to derail her career.

A former Spanish teacher in Baltimore County now working for city schools, Sciuto has been the subject of posts by Republicans and parent-rights activists since an alleged death threat last year against Kit Hart, chair of the Carroll County Moms for Liberty.

“Officer I swear I didn’t mean to murder her,” Sciuto wrote on X, above a photo of Hart. Moms for Liberty supporters quickly jumped on the post, calling it a “cryptic” threat to kill Hart, while Sciuto defended it as “online political satire.”

State Dels. Kathy Szeliga, Ryan Nawrocki, Robin Grammer Jr. and Lauren Arikan soon demanded Sciuto be removed from county schools and described the “murder” statement as “dangerous and abhorrent behavior.”

The teacher’s TikTok page, with more than 30,000 followers, contains several videos describing current events, spoofing complaints about politics in school and criticizing the Maryland Freedom Caucus. In one post, she mimics a Moms for Liberty parent visiting class for American Education Week, and in another, she challenges Nawrocki, a Baltimore County caucus member, to a basketball game.

Representing herself, Sciuto sued the four Republicans in Baltimore County Circuit Court on Thursday, as well as Hart and Talbot County Moms for Liberty chair Jan Greenhawk, who Sciuto said called her “a poisonous individual” in a since-deleted article.

Sciuto also filed suit against Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, whose posts about the situation went viral.

“These actions were not isolated,” Sciuto wrote in her complaint. “They reflect a pattern of communication and reinforcement between members and leaders of Moms for Liberty and political actors aligned with and loyal thereto, to amplify false accusations meant to (damage her career).”

None of the defendants in Sciuto’s lawsuit responded to requests for comment on Monday. The four Republicans in the complaint are all members of the Maryland Freedom Caucus.

In June 2024, the four delegates wrote and published a letter to Baltimore County Superintendent Myriam Rogers naming and condemning Sciuto’s social media pages before demanding she be terminated “immediately.”

According to the letter, Sciuto encouraged her followers to disrupt a summit on parental rights in schools and health care. The teacher’s lawsuit, however, is centered around the alleged death threat against Hart, a summit panelist.

Sciuto wrote in her complaint that before the letter was posted, she clarified online that she did not intend to threaten anyone. She told The Baltimore Sun that “murder” was meant to describe how she’d publicly “embarrassed” Hart at the summit when asking her to define what “woke” meant.

“I think the only possibility is that the people who saw it mischaracterized it, ignored (her apology) or just sent the letter anyway,” Sciuto said Monday.

A swarm of posts followed the delegates’ letter. Those from the anti-LGBTQ platform Libs of TikTok, including one with the contact information of school administrators and another accusing her of “showing off LGBTQ propaganda” in class, generated more than a million views, according to X.

Sciuto said she resigned from Baltimore County schools in May 2024.

The most recent post came in March, the lawsuit states, sometime after Sciuto was hired by Baltimore City Public Schools. In it, Hart associated Sciuto with a city teacher accused of sexually abusing children and said educators like them are the reason why the school system “has a literacy rate hovering just above zero.”

Sciuto said Monday that her high school has received calls demanding she be fired but that her administrators “are endlessly supportive.”

“They have my safety in mind,” she said.

The Baltimore Sun is not naming the school where Sciuto works due to risks to her and the students’ safety.

A spokesperson for city schools acknowledged questions about Sciuto’s employment but was not immediately available to respond.

For herself, Sciuto said she wants the lawsuit to take back control of the narrative — the story of her employment and her intentions — one “that should not exist.”

“I want to set a precedent that no matter who you are, if you have a title, if you’re a lawmaker … if you have that status, you can’t say things about people that aren’t real,” she said.

A larger, “worrying trend” Sciuto said she hopes to address is the persecution of public school teachers for things they do and believe outside of the classroom.

“We’re in a crisis right now,” she said. “We don’t have teachers; schools are losing funding and somebody needs to fight back.”

_____

©2025 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.