An Arizona mother who has been sentenced to five days in jail for questioning Covid policies she called unconstitutional while at her daughter’s school is speaking out about her sentence.
Jennifer Majuta, a mother to a 16-year-old daughter, was arrested in August of last year at Walden Grove High School, just outside of Tucson, and charged with a class 3 misdemeanour for allegedly trespassing on school property. Today she joined Valiant News Associate Editor Jack Hadfield to talk about her experience.
Along with other parents and concerned citizens, Majuta and her husband Damian questioned the school’s quarantine policy, whereby students who the school deemed to be unvaccinated would have to quarantine for 10 days if they came into contact with somebody who was covid positive. Majuta explained to Hadfield that locals raised multiple issues with the policy.
“Whatever side of Covid you’re on, there is still due process that has to be followed,” Majuta said. “We knew as parents that something was wrong. They can’t arbitrarily remove our children from in-person education without any kind of proof.”
Here’s mom…. pic.twitter.com/YfcH55ef0A
— #HB2289 (@ThatParentP4P) August 13, 2021
She told Hadfield that the school did not actually have proof that all the students they believed were unvaccinated actually were not, as they were going only off of county health records. If a student was vaccinated outside of the county, they could not be counted as having taken the vaccine.
“They’re going off what they think and not fact,” she added. “It is absolutely unconstitutional.”
In addition, the Covid vaccine was never actually required by the school as part of their overall vaccination program for attendance, and so an exemption form was never created or issued by the school.
Qualifying questions, such as whether the student had antibodies for covid, or had been exposed in the last 90 days, were also never asked by the school when demanding students be quarantined. Answering yes to these questions would allow an exemption to the quarantine.
“Not only are they not asking questions, they are suppressing options,” Majuta explained.
I spoke to Jennifer Majuta, who will be spending 5 days in jail from Monday for questioning covid policy at her daughter’s school.
“If you don’t stand up in those moments of history when you have a chance, you don’t want to look back and say, I wish I had done something” pic.twitter.com/rQlRskCwOS
— Jack Hadfield 🇬🇧 (@JackHadders) June 4, 2022
“There’s a constitutional complaint form that we came to find out was in the office, and in the student handbook it says that students need to be aware of this,” she told Valiant News. “Instead, they refused to talk to us, they only reiterated that they were following the Pima County health mandate,” she added.
The school couldn’t provide evidence to back the claim “because it violates other children’s privacy,” Majuta said. At the same time, “They had no problem with announcing to the entire school” that certain students were not vaccinated by removing them from the premises.
Majuta argued that the school subjected these children to “discrimination” from both students and teachers.
“There were teachers there that actually told their classrooms that they were not going to send home homework if you’re quarantined, because you should get the vaccine,” she said. “There’s retaliation. It’s basically a form of coercion.”
Her daughter became subject to this, prompting visits to the school from Majuta’s husband, Majuta, and eventually a small group of concerned parents.
According to Majuta, the school’s principal Theresa Hill refused to speak to them and described them as “assholes,” and said their concerns were “bullsh*t.”
“She said that education is a privilege, not a right,” said Majuta. “They just shut us down. They didn’t give us anywhere to go. They put us in a corner,” Majuta said.
“So we very peacefully refused to leave until somebody could help us. And so we were arrested,” said Majuta.
Meet Jennifer Majuta and Bo Majuta from Arizona.
Jennifer and Bo had their own daughter arrested with them because they refused to leave the school to quarantine their daughter after she was exposed to someone with covid.
The police repeatedly begged them to leave. pic.twitter.com/8bTxbBDgUS
— Resist Programming 🛰 (@RzstProgramming) August 14, 2021
Majuta, her husband, and her teenage daughter arrested for trespassing. Rather than simply being removed from the premises, the family was taken to the police station, fingerprinted, photographed, and eventually released to the school campus with a citation.
The resulting trial took 8 months. Majuta noted that she was never offered a trial by jury, and instead her and her husband were subject to a bench trial:
“During the trial, the prosecutor asked that our out of state travel privileges be revoked, and that every time we had to go to the school to attend our children’s needs, we were required to email the principal. Not for permission, but to basically makes us feel like criminals. She was concerned for her safety, just to use their power to make our lives difficult.”
Both parents were found guilty of trespass. The prosecutor asked for a 30 day jail sentence. Instead, both Jennifer and Damian were sentenced to 10 days each, reduced down to 5. However, both of them also have to take a class, and write an apology letter to the principal and the school.
“We’ve been informed that that is unconstitutional, as it violates our 1st and 5th Amendment rights to not be compelled in our speech and not to incriminate ourselves,” she said.
Hadfield asked Majuta what the community response was, to which she noted that they had received both support and backlash:
“The Police Department actually posted the incident on their Facebook, kind of doxing us. Overall the response on their Facebook page was supporting us and pretty positive, but of course we had people say that we were terrible parents, that our children should be removed from our home. The judge even said that we were setting a terrible example for our children, which of course we disagree.”
Watch Jennifer Majuta’s interview with Valiant News on Gab TV:
“You have to stand firm in your convictions that you’re doing the right thing, that you just feel in your heart that something isn’t right, this is wrong,” Majuta added:
“It’s not just about our children. It’s about other families, other children, and setting a precedent that anything can happen to anybody without due process. Your neighbour could turn you in. The government could pick you up if they don’t like that you did X, Y, or Z. Without due process, without following the letter of the law, this could happen to anybody.”
She argued that what had happened to them was a deliberate attempt to hang them out to dry as an example, so that nobody else would stand up against the unconstitutional covid policies created by the school and county:
“The judge even mentioned in our sentencing that she was making an example of us to dissuade other parents from doing what we did. She also was holding us accountable in our sentencing for mean things that strangers said to the principal. That was totally outside of our control. We had people say mean things to us! The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. Our sentence is harsher because of things that were outside of control, because of things that we didn’t do, to be set an example of. Not for the crime, but for political reasons.”
When asked whether she would do it all again, Majuta teared up. “We’ve talked about this a lot over the last year. It’s been very, very hard as a family,” she said.
“We would do it again, because if you don’t stand up in those moments in history, when you have a chance, you don’t want to look back and say, I wish I had done something. It was very very hard for us, but I would do it again.”
Majuta will begin serving her five day sentence on Monday, June 6.
