A conservative activist who is already suing the Augusta Police Department is now also suing the Augusta Board of Education.

Nicholas Blanchard, who is also known as “Corn Pop,” and who speaks up at school board meetings in Augusta and elsewhere in Maine, filed a lawsuit in federal court last week, claiming whenever he has tried to speak out during public comment periods over the last year, the school board and its chairperson, Martha Witham, cut him off and order him to stop speaking.

Blanchard, who has said he plans to run for the school board in Augusta, asks the court to toss out the school board’s policy on public commenting at meetings as an unconstitutional infringement on his First Amendment rights to free speech. He’s also asking that the court order the board to allow him and others who disagree with or criticize board decisions, to be able to speak at board meetings without being interrupted, being ordered to stop, or being threatened with removal by police.

“Between January and November 2025, Witham interrupted Blanchard seven times,” Tom Garrett, vice president and chief communications officer for the Institute for Free Speech, said in a news release announcing it is supporting Blanchard in his lawsuit.

“She censored him, for example, for calling board members who supported controversial transgender policies ‘soft beta males,’ for discussing a formal petition to fire a school administrator, for criticizing board members’ attendance records, and for claiming that the board was placing ideology over academic excellence,” Garrett said.

The release and lawsuit say speakers supporting the board’s positions were permitted to criticize Blanchard without interruption.

Blanchard’s confrontations with school officials include an October 2025 Augusta Board of Education meeting at which three people partially undressed, while Blanchard, who remained fully clothed, spoke out against transgender students being allowed to use locker rooms of their choosing.

“I don’t expect the whole school board to agree with me, but I do expect them to let me finish speaking,” Blanchard said in the news release. “When other speakers can praise the board for five minutes while I get cut off after 30 seconds for expressing the opposite view, that’s viewpoint discrimination — and a violation of my First Amendment rights.”

Blanchard’s lawsuit against the school board and Witham, filed by Augusta-based Steve Smith Trial Lawyers, is his second lawsuit pending against Augusta officials claiming unconstitutional violations of his rights.

Last month Blanchard also sued the Augusta Police Department, and one of its sergeants, Desmond Nutter, stating he was illegally detained by police at the October
No Kings rally on Memorial Bridge in Augusta.

In that lawsuit, Blanchard states he was detained by police after attendees of the No Kings rally reported he had a gun. He said he had a Byrna gun, a nonlethal self-defense weapon, on him at the time. He claims Nutter told him he was arrested because Nutter wanted to get him off the bridge before the crowd turned on Blanchard. He was taken to the police station before later being released without being charged with any crimes.

Blanchard said that illegal detainment deprived him of the ability to speak out at the No Kings rally, and he “suffered emotional distress and embarrassment from the arrest.”

Neither Witham nor Superintendent Michael Tracy could be reached Monday for comment on the lawsuit against the school board.

The city’s attorney has previously declined to comment on Blanchard’s lawsuit against the police department.

The board’s policy on public comment during board meetings has drawn criticism from free speech advocates previously. In a letter, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression officials criticized it as infringing on free speech by limiting the public’s ability to comment.

Augusta’s public participation policy specifically states a school board meeting is not a public forum. It also allows the board chairperson to set time limits and forbids gossip, defamatory comments or the use of abusive or vulgar language.