Several civil rights organizations including the ACLU are asking a state appeals court to throw out a no-contact order against Amanda Wallace, a Durham activist accused of harassing a county official.
The appeal contends that the no-contact order—issued in December on behalf of Durham County Department of Social Services Director Maggie Clapp—violates the First Amendment twice: once by curbing Wallace’s speech and movement in response to protected criticism of a public official, and again by drawing those limits so vaguely that Wallace can’t tell what’s forbidden, thus casting a chilling effect over her advocacy work as a whole.
Wallace runs an organization called Operation Stop CPS that advocates for child protective services reform. At protests, she frequently likens family separation practices to “kidnapping” and “genocide,” terms she has said match the severity of what families endure when the system takes their children.
According to the no-contact order, in the year before the order was issued Wallace repeatedly confronted Clapp in ways that left the director fearing for her safety: intercepting her outside the DSS building and calling her a kidnapper, chalking messages like “Maggie Clapp Commits Genocide” on the street near her apartment, and disrupting a foster-care adoption event Clapp attended. The order, which is effective until this December, bans Wallace from entering Clapp’s apartment building and from traversing the streets and sidewalks adjacent to it. It also bars Wallace from contacting Clapp by phone, and while it allows her to email Clapp, it forbids “abusive, threatening, and harassing language” in those emails.
Wallace’s appeal, filed Thursday by the ACLU of North Carolina, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Movement for Family Power, asks the state Court of Appeals to vacate the no-contact order. Central to the appeal is the claim that Wallace’s criticism of Clapp is protected political speech, and, as such, cannot be used as the basis for a no-contact order.
The appeal separately challenges how the order is written, arguing that its restrictions are undefined to a point that forces Wallace to forgo her broader advocacy work for fear of violating terms she doesn’t understand. Specifically, the order bars Wallace from “abusing or injuring” Clapp or the county without defining what that means, leaving her unable to gauge what she can and can’t say, the appeal states.
The order also leaves some level of ambiguity to its geographic limitations, according to the appeal. That’s particularly notable because Clapp’s apartment sits next to Durham Central Park, a public forum, the appeal states.
Compounding the ambiguity issues, the appeal notes, is an exchange at the hearing where the order was granted: when Wallace’s lawyer asked the judge, James T. Hill, to clarify certain restrictions, Hill gave specific oral instructions that never made it into the written order: for instance, that Wallace should avoid directing the term “kidnapper” at Clapp but remains free to use such language against the social services department generally.
Finally, the appeal argues that the county misused the statute it invoked in obtaining the no-contact order—a workplace-violence law originally passed to protect victims of domestic violence from harassment at work.
“At its core, this case is about whether public officials can weaponize a statute intended to protect survivors of intimate partner violence at their workplace against their constituents, in order to silence speech they find uncomfortable and suppress a movement they dislike,” Adina Marx-Arpadi, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a release. “They cannot.”
Wallace worked as a child-protective services investigator in North Carolina for ten years before founding Operation Stop CPS in 2021. Her dispute with Clapp closely parallels a clash she had with the former Durham DSS Director, Ben Rose, in 2022. That year, Rose obtained a no-contact order against Wallace under the same Workplace Violence Prevention Act invoked by Clapp, seeking to bar her from protesting at his home, the DSS offices, and the courthouse. Hill, who handled that case as well, upheld the order but allowed Wallace to continue protesting under certain limits.
Wallace has been involved in other disputes with local government as well. In December, she was banned from Durham City Hall after disrupting the swearing-in of newly elected Durham city council member Matt Kopac; the city manager lifted the ban in January after an appeal hearing. Wallace was also charged with second-degree criminal trespass in Person County last year in a case brought by then-Person County DSS Director Carlton Paylor, who alleged Wallace entered and remained on his property after it was posted against trespassers. That case is set for a jury trial this month.
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