Beth Majeroni files civil action lawsuit against Chatham County Board of Elections

Almost a year after the video of Elizabeth “Beth” Majeroni being removed from a July 10, 2023 Chatham County Board of Elections meeting went viral online, the 69-year-old has filed a formal complaint with the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia against those she holds responsible. She lists 14 counts in her complaint, with her as the plaintiff and defendants as the Chatham County Board of Elections (BOE); BOE Chairman, Thomas J. Mahoney III; and the Chatham County Police Department (CCPD) officers who physically removed her from the meeting Andrew Nizwantowski and Robert Santoro.

The complaint (see below) was filed on July 8, 2024 by Mrs. Majeroni’s attorneys, Rachel Berlin Benjamin and Jonathan D. Grunberg. According to the 29-page complaint, Benjamin W. Cheesbro is the United States Magistrate Judge presiding over the case. In the “Introduction” portion of the complaint, Majeroni’s lawyers lay out the grounds for her taking legal action.
“Majeroni cares deeply about her community and the rights of the public to participate in their democracy. After serving as a poll watcher for the May 2022 primary and witnessing several issues at the polling place, she followed up with open records act requests to the Chatham County Board of Elections. When those requests were not fully answered, she got a Chatham County grand jury to investigate the BOE. And that investigation resulted in the Chatham County grand jury advising the BOE to do better. The BOE instead retaliated against Majeroni.”
“In July of 2023, the BOE held its first meeting that included a ‘formal’ public comment period on the agenda. The BOE used this as an opportunity to retaliate against Majeroni by, inter alia, preventing her from speaking, having her arrested, and having her physically hauled out of the meeting. The BOE and the officers who accosted Majeroni that day had no basis for their misconduct other than to deny Majeroni her Constitutional rights and otherwise harm her. For this, they are liable.”

A text message and voicemail left on Mrs. Majeroni’s cell phone were requesting comment but were unreturned. Grunberg did not respond to a message left for him at his Atlanta law office (Wade, Grunberg & Wilson, LLC). The BOE elections supervisor is Billy Wooten. He was not named as a defendant in Mrs. Majeroni’s complaint to the court, but he was the subject of a March 2023 grand jury case which alleged he did not fully comply with open records requests filed by Majeroni to the Board of Elections for what she believed to be fraud during the May 2022 primary elections.

“Majeroni filed a complaint against Defendant BOE and Billy Wooten—who is the BOE’s Supervisor of Elections—with the Grand Jury of Chatham County so that it could use its investigatory powers to determine if a crime had been committed,” the complaint from Majeroni says. “The Grand Jury voted to create an investigating committee to investigate Majeroni’s complaint. Ultimately, in March of 2023, the Grand Jury recommended that the BOE provide additional documents to Majeroni, that Defendant BOE allocate additional resources towards responding to open records requests, that Defendant BOE improve training on chain of custody paperwork, and that the Grand Jury continue its investigation during its next term in order to understand potential issues with QR codes on the election ballot.”

Wooten did not comment when reached by phone at the BOE office on July 15. He said the County Attorney (R. Jonathan Hart) was handling the case for county defendants, although he was unable to confirm if the two CCPD police officers were also represented by Hart. An email sent to Hart asking for comment was unreturned at the time of publishing.

Majeroni worked as a volunteer at a County polling site during the May 2022 primaries. She ran as a Republican against incumbent Ben Watson in the May 2024 primary election for the State Senate District 1 seat. Watson won on the strength of 4,433 votes (59.4 percent) with Majeroni collecting 3,026 votes (40.6). Her complaint describes the July 10, 2023 meeting at the BOE when she spoke for approximately 70 seconds before Mahoney stopped her and the officers stepped in (timestamp 1:30 of embedded video). Public comment allowed for three minutes for each speaker who had signed up to talk. Majeroni had signed her name to the list prior to the meeting, and she was addressing her grand jury allegations against Mr. Wooten when she was halted.
“Defendant Mahoney then ordered Defendants Nizwantowski and Santoro to remove Majeroni from the Meeting, while he proclaimed that she was ‘out of order,’” the complaint says. “In so doing, Defendant Mahoney was motivated by ill will, malice, and spite; and he intended to harm Majeroni, including by: consciously retaliating against her for having exercised her First Amendment rights, including through her open records act requests, her Grand Jury Complaint, and her comments at the Meeting; preventing her from exercising her Constitutional rights; unlawfully arresting her; unlawfully depriving her of her liberty; preventing her from holding the BOE accountable; dissuading her from continuing to pursue the Grand Jury Complaint; causing her physical pain; and causing her severe emotional distress.”

The official minutes from the meeting are on the BOE website. They state the following of the July 10, 2023 meeting: “During the Public Comment session, the Board was forced to recess twice due to crowd disorder.”