In December 2025, Brandon Bonner, a Connecticut parent, filed suit against Stamford’s Board of Education (SBE), looking to compel one of the city’s preschool programs to allow his unvaccinated four-year-old, special-needs daughter to return to school. Last month, Stamford’s BOE filed a motion to dismiss the suit, and Cameron Atkinson, Bonner’s attorney, said he is prepared to “do things the hard way.”
“We’re about to file for a preliminary injunction to get her back into school for the fall,” said Atkinson. “We have a long history in this country of respecting religious liberty on the vaccination issue, and nothing has really changed.”
Atkinson is no stranger to taking on controversial cases; in 2022, he spent a four-month stint representing Alex Jones in the defamation case brought by the families of Sandy Hook victims, making him one in a long list of attorneys to represent Jones in a case that ultimately found him liable to pay out $1.4 billion. He is currently representing a group of Republican lawmakers who sued the state’s House Speaker Matthew Ritter and Senate President Martin Looney for their use of emergency certification last legislative session, representing plaintiffs in two other cases who are challenging the state’s vaccine mandates, and has litigated several 2nd Amendment suits in the past.
Per Bonner’s complaint, his daughter is autistic and non-verbal, leaving her with “speech and language impairments [that] adversely affect her educational performance.” In 2024, the SBE determined she needed special education and, as part of her individual education plan, enrolled her in the Apples Pre-K program, “an educational setting specially designed to provide special education services to students such as Bonner’s daughter,” reads the complaint. Despite this, in October 2025, the SBE denied his daughter entry to the program due to Bonner’s refusal to comply with the state’s school vaccine mandates. Bonner, a Southern Baptist, states his refusal to comply comes from his and his wife’s “religious beliefs, including the sanctity of life and the religious responsibility to abstain from actions that are a sin before God.”
“Plaintiff Bonner is a Christian and believes in the sanctity of life,” reads the complaint. “Thus, he believes that abortion is a sin against God as a religious matter. Bonner also believes that receiving a vaccination that has been tested, manufactured, or otherwise developed through the use of cell lines derived from aborted fetal cells would be a sin before God.”
Bonner and his wife “attempted to negotiate” with Apples Pre-K, but claim they “remain immovable” on the issue. Members of the SBE allegedly “threatened to report” Bonner and his wife to DCF for educational neglect in December 2025, before ultimately deciding to revoke his daughter’s IEP altogether, emailing Bonner a form to consent to its revocation. Bonner’s complaint called the form “misleading and confusing to say the least.”
“They alleged that Bonner was choosing ‘not to make [his] daughter available to [them]’ for the provision of special education services under her IEP,” reads the complaint. “This claim is patently false. Bonner wants to bring his daughter to school, but the Defendants have collectively barred her from entering the schoolhouse door.”
Bonner also claims to have requested the provision of remote learning, to no avail.
“The Defendants have made, and continue to make, no effort to explore an alternative forum to provide her the special education services that they are required to provide her under federal law,” reads the complaint. “Instead, the Defendants’ approach has been to do everything possible to coerce Bonner into vaccinating his daughter by placing him in the most terrible of situations: picking between his deeply held religious beliefs and his daughter’s future.”
Bonner is accusing the SBE of violating his First Amendment parental rights, the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which requires all federally funded states and municipalities to provide free and appropriate special education to children with disabilities. The SBE argued that these claims hold no merit because the suit was not served to the defendants within the federally mandated 90-day timeline, the claims made against the individual members of the SBE in their official capacity are “duplicative of those against Stamford,” and because Bonner “failed to exhaust his administrative remedies pursuant to the IDEA.”
In 2021, Connecticut’s legislature passed Public Act No. 21-6, revoking families’ ability to seek religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Previous suits targeting Public Act No. 21-6, including one litigated by Atkinson himself, have been dismissed by federal courts. The SBE cited these previously dismissed challenges in its motion to dismiss.
“Even assuming, without conceding that strict scrutiny applies, § 10-204a [Public Act No. 21-6] advances the compelling state interest of ensuring public health and safety through vaccination and is narrowly tailored to effectuate compelling state interest,” reads the motion.
In 2026, the legislature passed a bill that amended the state’s version of the RFRA, to explicitly state that Connecticut’s vaccine requirements “shall not be construed as a violation” of Connecticut’s RFRA and applies to “any civil action pending on or filed after.”
As a result, Atkinson said a dismissal for the case is “probably coming,” but that he intends to appeal the suit on state constitutional claims. Atkinson shared his belief that “the federal courts are the place to win the issue.”
“There are a number of cases up on the Second Circuit right now that will probably have a pretty big impact on whether we win that or not, and so we’ll be pursuing the preliminary injunction and we’ll see what happens with it,” said Atkinson.
Atkinson cited two cases in particular before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals: Miller v. McDonald, a case out of New York, in which a group of Amish plaintiffs sued the state’s Department of Health, claiming that the state’s school vaccination mandates were unconstitutional, and Milford Christian Church et al v. Bye, Atkinson’s case which was previously dismissed last August, but appealed to the Second Circuit the very next day. Miller v. McDonald’s appeal to the Second Circuit was denied in March 2025, but the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Second Circuit for reconsideration last December. Atkinson hoped the Supreme Court would take up his case if necessary.
“I’m 100% confident that we should win if the rule of law is followed, but if the courts are going to be persistent in just substituting their own perception of what’s right for what the First Amendment guarantees, then we’re going to have a long road ahead of us in terms of getting the US Supreme Court to fix it,” said Atkinson.
Inside Investigator requested comment from SBE’s attorneys, but did not receive a response.
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