How Fear Teaches a Public Office to Back Up
Part 4 of How Authoritarianism Works Now: how fear, pre-compliance, and the cost of speaking up change public institutions from the inside.
On June 25, 2026, Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins filed a whistleblower-reprisal and education-accountability complaint with the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability. He accused the Fayette County Board of Education of retaliating against him after he raised concerns about possible misuse of public funds. The board has denied wrongdoing and has said it is following the law.
A few days later, Liggins filed an Open Meetings Act appeal with the Kentucky Attorney General’s office. He asked the Attorney General to review whether the board’s closed-session actions were lawful. WKYT reported that the board had placed him on paid administrative leave, named an acting superintendent, and taken actions Liggins says were decided behind closed doors.
The complaint has not been decided. The Open Meetings Act appeal has not resolved the employment dispute. The public record gives us a current example for Part 4 of How Authoritarianism Works Now: fear, pre-compliance, and the cost of speaking up.
Fear and pre-compliance work when people narrow their own choices before anyone formally orders them to do so. In a school district, that may mean fewer concerns put in writing, fewer contested lessons taught, or fewer books ordered because staff expect a complaint. In a public office, law firm, or university, the same pattern may look like a worker avoiding candid advice, a lawyer declining a client, or a university closing an office before a court issues a final ruling.
The cost of speaking up may come as discipline, investigation, closed-door review, legal expense, public targeting, job insecurity, isolation, or the quiet lesson that silence may be safer.
What People Learn Before Anyone Gives an Order
Fear inside a school district, court, agency, university, jail, library, or public office rarely begins with a written order that says, “Do not speak.”
It usually begins with uncertainty. Someone raises a concern. The concern triggers closed meetings, legal review, access restrictions, a personnel action, an investigation, a public controversy, or a complaint. Staff members start asking what can be said, where it can be said, who may see it, and whether the school district, court, agency, university, jail, or public board will protect the person who raised the concern.
That is pre-compliance. People comply with pressure before a final order, court ruling, disciplinary finding, or written directive requires it.
Kentucky schools, universities, courts, jails, and public agencies depend on people willing to use professional judgment. That includes employees who report misuse of public funds, judges who issue unpopular rulings, librarians who follow professional standards, jail staff who document medical or legal-access concerns, and university workers who identify risks before they become scandals.
When people decide silence is safer, the public loses early warnings.
How Caution Turns Into Retreat
Fear and pre-compliance often follow a clear sequence.
First, a rule or risk becomes unclear. A law may use broad words such as “harmful,” “inappropriate,” “political,” “ideological,” or “unprofessional.” A board may take a sensitive matter into closed session. An agency may delay guidance. A public office may issue a warning without explaining the boundary.
Second, the possible penalty feels serious. The person may fear discipline, investigation, firing, litigation, loss of funding, professional consequences, public exposure, or personal liability.
Third, one person or office becomes the example. Others watch the cost of being visible. They do not need to agree with the punishment to absorb the lesson.
Fourth, caution spreads. Staff members avoid certain topics, public employees stop writing candid emails, and boards send sensitive questions to counsel. In larger offices, the same retreat may appear as paused decisions, renamed university programs, reconsidered clients, or public explanations framed as compliance or risk management.
Some caution is legitimate. Personnel matters may require confidentiality. Some complaints deserve investigation. Some legal risks deserve review. Some speech or conduct may fall outside professional standards.
The warning sign is a pattern: ordinary judgment becomes so risky that people stop using it.
Complaint Channels Cut Both Ways
Kentucky already has formal complaint channels that serve legitimate public purposes.
The Office of Education Accountability, housed within the Legislative Research Commission, receives concerns and complaints involving local school districts. Its public hotline page directs people to submit written complaints and provides phone and fax options for concerns about local school districts.
That review can protect the public. It gives parents, citizens, school employees, and others a place to raise concerns when a local school district has not adequately addressed or explained alleged waste, mismanagement, or illegal activity.
Complaint channels also create incentives. A complaint procedure with clear standards, fair review, protection against retaliation, and public outcomes can strengthen public accountability. A complaint procedure with vague standards, uneven enforcement, public targeting, or political pressure can teach people to avoid lawful work.
Kentucky’s school-materials law gives you another example. Senate Bill 5 became law in 2023 and required local school boards to adopt a complaint-resolution policy for parent complaints about materials alleged to be “harmful to minors.”
Kentucky Department of Education guidance explains that a parent complaint goes to the school principal, who reviews the complaint, investigates the material, program, or event, and decides whether access remains, is restricted, or is removed. Appeals go to the local board of education and must be discussed and voted on in a board meeting, with open records and open meetings requirements attached to the review.
That procedure may be fair in an individual case. It may also change behavior before a complaint is filed. A librarian may avoid ordering a book because a challenge would consume time and bring public attention. A teacher may skip a topic because the boundary feels unclear. A principal may advise staff to avoid anything likely to prompt a complaint.
When that happens, the public record will not always show a formal ban.
The evidence may be the book not ordered, the lesson not taught, the discussion not held, and the question not asked.
Ambiguity Makes Caution Do the Work
The first way fear enters public work is ambiguity. People become more cautious when they cannot tell what is allowed.
In 2025, the Trump administration issued executive orders and Education Department warnings aimed at dismantling DEI programs in federal agencies, contractors, schools, and universities. Reuters reported that the University of Michigan shut down its DEI office after citing Trump executive orders and Education Department advisories warning that institutions could lose federal funding if they continued DEI programs.
The University of Michigan example shows how ambiguity creates pre-compliance. The federal government did not need to identify every forbidden program in advance. Broad standards and large funding risks created enough uncertainty for the university to close an office, shift services elsewhere, and change its public posture before all legal questions were resolved.
Kentucky has a direct stake in that pattern. WDRB reported in March 2025 that the University of Kentucky was one of 45 universities under federal investigation for alleged “race-exclusionary practices” connected to graduate programs. The U.S. Department of Education named higher education institutions under Title VI investigation, and Reuters reported that the department opened probes into 45 universities.
A Kentucky university does not need to lose a case to change behavior. A federal investigation, a funding warning, or an unclear enforcement standard can alter hiring, scholarships, programming, student support, public messaging, and internal legal advice.
Exposure Makes Public Service Feel Personal
The second way fear enters public work is exposure. People behave differently when they believe their names, emails, decisions, job histories, or professional work may become the next public target.
Reuters reported on the American Accountability Foundation, a pro-Trump outside group that published online watchlists targeting federal employees it described as “subversive.” The report said the lists focused heavily on career civil servants associated with DEI or other disfavored policy areas and included personal details, such as photos and job histories.
That kind of public targeting changes the terms of public service. Career employees, staff lawyers, program managers, and supervisors may all start making defensive choices: fewer assignments accepted, less candid advice written down, more distance from lawful work, and less willingness to protect a targeted employee.
Exposure works because public servants do not have to be fired to learn they are vulnerable.
We can apply the same test locally. When a teacher, librarian, jail employee, university worker, school administrator, judge, clerk, or county employee is named publicly for ordinary professional work, the next person in that role receives the message. The message may be stronger if leadership stays quiet.
Punishment Makes One Target Teach the Rest
The third way fear enters public work is punishment. One visible target can teach many others what resistance may cost.
The Trump administration’s actions against major law firms provide a clear example. The White House issued an executive order targeting Perkins Coie, including security-clearance review, restrictions involving federal buildings and federal officials, and scrutiny of government contracts. Perkins Coie sued. A federal judge later blocked key provisions and then struck down the order.
Reuters reported that the broader pressure campaign against major law firms changed behavior across the legal profession. Some firms scaled back pro bono work, diversity initiatives, and litigation that could put them in conflict with the Trump administration. Reuters also reported that multiple firms reached agreements with the administration involving pro bono commitments and DEI-related concessions.
Punishment need not reach every person, firm, school, university, agency, or board. It only has to prompt the next decision-maker to calculate whether the cost of resistance is worth it.
The public cost is serious. If lawyers fear representing disfavored clients, rights become harder to enforce. If school employees fear raising budget concerns, misuse of funds becomes harder to catch. If judges fear political punishment, independent rulings become harder to sustain.
Complaint Portals Can Become Monitoring Tools
The fourth way fear enters public work is surveillance. Complaint portals, mandated disclosures, records demands, audits, public databases, and reporting requirements can make people feel watched even when no complaint has been sustained.
In February 2025, the U.S. Department of Education launched an “End DEI” portal for parents, students, teachers, and community members to submit reports of alleged discrimination based on race or sex in publicly funded K-12 schools. Reuters reported on the portal as part of the administration’s broader campaign against DEI in schools.
A public reporting portal may reveal genuine discrimination or misconduct. The risk grows when a portal is attached to vague legal standards, ideological language, threats of federal funding, and public enforcement announcements.
Teachers, principals, superintendents, and school district staff do not need to wait for a complaint to change behavior. They may act as if a hostile reviewer is already in the room.
Kentucky has its own school complaint channels under SB 5 and other education laws. Local school boards, principals, superintendents, and the Kentucky Department of Education should be able to explain how complaints are reviewed, how employees are protected from retaliation, how student privacy is protected, and how local boards prevent complaint procedures from becoming political monitoring tools.
Isolation Turns Judgment Into Personal Risk
The fifth way fear enters public work is isolation. Fear grows when a person believes supervisors, colleagues, counsel, insurers, board members, or professional peers will not stand with them.
The law firm example clearly shows isolation. Reuters reported that major firms, wary of political retaliation, reduced or avoided pro bono work that could conflict with the Trump administration’s policy agenda. The pressure did not fall only on firm leadership. It also reached lawyers, nonprofit clients, immigrants, civil rights advocates, and vulnerable people who rely on pro bono representation.
Isolation changes behavior because people begin calculating who will defend them. Lawyers, federal employees, teachers, and superintendents may face different risks, but the calculation is similar: whether the institution will protect the work, protect the person doing it, or treat the person as the problem.
That question has local force in Kentucky. School employees, jail workers, librarians, and judges all need a fair review process when their professional judgment comes under scrutiny. The public should be able to see whether the relevant office protects lawful speech or leaves the person exposed.
Isolation turns independent judgment into personal risk.
Exhaustion Drains People Into Silence
The sixth way fear enters public work is exhaustion. Repeated investigations, compliance demands, document production, legal review, public hearings, appeals, delays, and legal costs can wear down people and offices until silence feels easier than clarification.
Education Week reported in May 2025 that it had confirmed 100 U.S. Department of Education investigations aligned with key Trump administration priorities. The investigations involved school districts, colleges, universities, state education departments, and athletic associations, with many focused on DEI programming and transgender student policies.
The U.S. Department of Education also announced Title VI investigations into higher education institutions. Reuters reported that 45 universities were under investigation after the department cited complaints involving a program that set eligibility based on race.
Each investigation may have a legal basis that deserves review on its own record. The fear pattern comes from scale, cost, public announcement, funding risk, and uncertainty. A university, school district, or state education agency may decide that the safest path is to narrow first and ask questions later.
We should recognize that exhaustion is not always obvious. It may look like delays, pauses, narrowed programs, revised trainings, or employees placed on leave. In public meetings, it may also appear as a board waiting for counsel, with the public losing visibility into the decision.
Kentucky Already Has the Pathways
The Kentucky connection for Part 4 is direct. Fayette County Public Schools is one of Kentucky’s largest school districts, and the dispute now involves both the Office of Education Accountability and the Kentucky Attorney General’s open-meetings review authority. SB 5 applies to Kentucky public schools, while the University of Kentucky has already been named in a federal higher-education investigation tied to the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign.
Those examples do not make every complaint, investigation, closed meeting, or legal review improper. They identify the places where fear and pre-compliance can grow if standards are vague, review is weak, retaliation is tolerated, or public access is delayed.
When a public office changes course under pressure, you should identify the exact office that acted, the authority used, the person affected, and the available review path.
Questions You Can Ask
When a Kentucky school district, university, court, jail, agency, library, or public board changes behavior under pressure, you can ask these questions:
What specific statute, policy, contract term, legal opinion, board action, or funding condition is being cited?
Who made the decision: the elected board, superintendent, agency head, county jailer, county attorney, university board, outside counsel, contractor, or closed-session consensus?
Was the decision made in public, or was the key discussion held behind closed doors?
If a complaint was filed, what written standard will be used to decide it?
Is the office responding to a legal requirement, a pending complaint, a funding threat, a lawsuit threat, or fear of public controversy?
Are employees, students, parents, detainees, workers, or affected families allowed to speak without retaliation?
Is there a written record explaining the decision?
Who can appeal, investigate, review, or overturn the action?
Did the office remove, pause, narrow, or delay something before the law clearly required it?
What message does this decision send to the next person who wants to raise a concern?
These questions are especially important when the public explanation relies on legal advice that has not been released, a closed-session discussion that cannot be reviewed, or a vague claim of compliance that does not identify the specific legal duty.
What to Watch Next
In the FCPS dispute, watch the Kentucky Attorney General’s response to the Open Meetings Act appeal, any action by the Office of Education Accountability, future Fayette County Board of Education agendas, closed-session notices, public explanations of any investigation, and any settlement or employment action involving Superintendent Demetrus Liggins.
Across Kentucky schools, watch how local boards handle SB 5 complaints, whether districts publish required outcomes, how often materials or programs are removed before final review, and whether teachers or librarians describe self-censorship.
At Kentucky universities, watch federal civil rights investigations, state anti-DEI implementation, scholarship changes, office closures, renamed programs, board actions, public records responses, and employee speech restrictions.
In Kentucky jails, courts, agencies, fiscal courts, and public boards, watch for actions that sound like ordinary legal caution but function as retreat: delayed guidance, restricted communication, sudden legal review, narrowed public comment, new reporting duties, employee discipline after internal complaints, and board decisions made with little public explanation.
Fear does not always leave a headline. Sometimes it leaves a quieter record: the concern not raised, the vote not taken, the lesson not taught, the document not written, the client not represented, the complaint not filed, and the public question not asked.
That is the record Kentuckians should learn to read.
Direct Sources
WKYT, “FCPS Superintendent Demetrus Liggins files whistleblower complaint, alleges retaliation by school board”
https://www.wkyt.com/2026/06/25/fcps-superintendent-demetrus-liggins-files-whistleblower-complaint-alleges-retaliation-by-school-board/
WKYT, “FCPS superintendent asks AG to overturn board’s closed-session actions”
https://www.wkyt.com/2026/06/30/fcps-superintendent-asks-ag-overturn-boards-closed-session-actions/
Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, Office of Education Accountability Hotline
https://legislature.ky.gov/LRC/OEA/Pages/OEA-Hotline.aspx
Kentucky Department of Education, Senate Bill 5 Supplemental Guidance
https://www.education.ky.gov/districts/LegislativeGuidance/Documents/SB%205%20Supplemental%20Guidance.pdf
Kentucky General Assembly, Senate Bill 5, 2023 Regular Session
https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb5.html
Reuters, “University of Michigan shuts DEI office, citing Trump orders and funding warning”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/university-michigan-shuts-dei-office-citing-trump-orders-funding-warning-2025-03-28/
Reuters, “Pro-Trump group wages campaign to purge ‘subversive’ federal workers”
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/pro-trump-group-wages-campaign-purge-subversive-federal-workers-2025-08-07/
White House, “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-perkins-coie-llp/
Reuters, “How Trump’s crackdown on law firms is undermining legal defenses for the vulnerable”
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/trumps-war-big-law-leads-firms-retreat-pro-bono-work-underdogs-2025-07-31/
Reuters, “Law firm targeted by Trump sues as five other top firms make deals”
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro-bono-work-common-causes-2025-04-11/
U.S. Department of Education, “U.S. Department of Education Launches ‘End DEI’ Portal”
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-launches-end-dei-portal
Reuters, “U.S. launches ‘End DEI’ portal for public complaints about diversity in schools”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-launches-end-dei-portal-public-complaints-about-diversity-schools-2025-02-28/
Education Week, “What 100 Ed. Dept. Investigations Say About Trump’s Agenda for Schools”
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/what-100-ed-dept-investigations-say-about-trumps-agenda-for-schools/2025/05
U.S. Department of Education, “Office for Civil Rights Initiates Title VI Investigations into Institutions of Higher Education”
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-civil-rights-initiates-title-vi-investigations-institutions-of-higher-education
Reuters, “Trump administration probes 45 universities on race policies”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-education-department-says-it-is-probing-45-universities-2025-03-14/
WDRB, “University of Kentucky under federal investigation for ‘race-exclusionary practices’”
https://www.wdrb.com/news/education/university-of-kentucky-under-federal-investigation-for-race-exclusionary-practices/article_38d29ebe-00fa-11f0-add2-9fc069277c48.html
PEN America, “Educational Intimidation”
https://pen.org/report/educational-intimidation/
Brennan Center for Justice, “Political Intimidation and Violence Against Officeholders”
https://www.brennancenter.org/series/political-intimidation-and-violence-against-officeholders