Fake Scandals Create Real Legal Costs for Fairfax County Taxpayers
- Vanessa Hall
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
Gone are the days of expensive FOIAs, because there is a great new tool to evaluate the magnitude of outside legal costs associated with some of the fake scandals ginned up against Fairfax County Public Schools. Meet the Fairfax County Transparency Application brought to you by Fairfax County Public Schools and the Fairfax County Government.
Below is an example of a search conducted for the firm King and Spalding LLP (K&S) for the past fiscal year. Which shows that over the last fiscal year (FY 2025-26), $8,933,303.78 was paid to K&S.
This is four times more than was spent by K&S in FY2024-25 and more than the entire legal fees per year in any previous year!
How is this possible?
You may recall that King and Spalding was the firm that was contracted to conduct the outside investigation of the Centreville Abortion "Scandal" (see "Has the Expensive Fake Abortion Scandal been Put to Rest?" for more details) which involved claims by Zenaida Perez (and her allies) that were so astonishing that Governor Youngkin called a criminal police investigation, Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee "demanded answers," and the U.S. Department of Education initiated an enforcement action against FCPS for “reportedly facilitating the provision of abortion services to students.”
The story inspired countless political rallies and attracted people to film and target Centreville High School students and staff. Not only that, but the staff and administrators targeted by the allegations were placed on administrative leave, which a dangerous place to be as an employee, and they suffered threats, hate mail, and harm to their reputation due to the published allegations.
K&S conducted a thorough investigation by interviewing dozens of people which resulted in two detailed, professional reports that responded to the questions of the public, Superintendent, and Senator Bill Cassidy. At the same time, the FCPS Superintendent and staff managed an entire school district while trying to also manage the chaos created by the outrageous abortion allegations.
I wondered how these payments to K&S connected to the Centreville Abortion "Scandal" Activity which involved lurid reporting, secret recordings, and falsified documentation (per the "whistleblower"), so I mapped out the timeline versus the K&S fees.
Of course, bills and payments are usually about one to two months behind, but this (slightly chaotic) graphic gives a visual of why the K&S fees jumped from a "mere" $292,000 in August 2025 to an average of $1.2 million per month from September 2025 through February 2026. During that time, they investigated the allegations of Perez and others before defending FCPS and staff against her lawsuits--all of that was during immense public and governmental pressure.
Considering the sources of stories and the timing, it was clear to many Fairfax residents that this scandal was intended to sway the gubernatorial race in 2025, especially since it involved allegations stemming from incidents in 2021-2022. However, no one would have imagined that such a flimsy and old scandal could have resulted in an estimated $6 million or more in outside legal fees! Even I was surprised by how much the Centreville Fake Abortion Scandal has cost, and I analyzed and FOIAed the costs of the National Merit "Scandal" lawsuits that involved some of the same parties, but only cost FCPS $1.65 million in outside legal fees.
Yet, this scandal isn't over yet. The Daily Signal and IWF continue to churn out support for this weak, unsubstantiated story and Perez filed an appeal of her lawsuit on June 8, 2026. It looks like K&S is not done yet!
Red Wine and Blue has quantified the costs public school districts spent in 2022-23 related to the culture wars on increased security, communication, staff recruitment, community relations, and legal costs.
"Culture wars cost public schools 3.2 billion dollars." -Red Wine & Blue
It is sad that taxpayers are footing the bill for personal and political vendettas against school systems. In fact, it would be great if taxpayers had the right to recover these funds from the political operatives and organizations that see school systems like FCPS as ripe for legal shenanigans or battlegrounds for their culture wars.
Instead, those who are suing the schools continue to be given media platforms to complain about FCPS's rising outside legal costs, while their free lawyers look for new clients and/or new school districts to harass. Yet, we, the Fairfax County taxpayers, are left holding the bill for their unending culture war appetite.
However, based on the independent K&S investigations, it is students, staff, and education who are also footing the bill for the chaos and trauma caused by the unending politically motivated lawsuits. Specifically, in the case of the Fake Centreville Abortion Scandal, the K&S reports are clear that:
"Regrettably, it appears that innocent Centreville HS personnel in this case were wrongly and publicly accused of criminal acts without any sound factual basis.” - Superintendent Reid
We have to do better. There are good reasons to sue school districts, and there are political reasons to sue school districts. We must push back on the latter.
