Fight Over Local Facebook Group Pits The Aclu Against A Powerful Nj Law Firm

What started as a minor lawsuit over access to a local Facebook group in a small New Jersey city has spiraled into a fight over a state law intended to discourage powerful interests from suppressing free speech. Now, a small-town dispute online has spilled into the courts, with the New Jersey ACLU on one side and one of New Jersey’s most politically connected law firms on the other.

The pair of original plaintiffs — Rahway married couple Alan Levy and Lisa Vandever-Levy — stand accused of “malicious abuse of process” for unsuccessfully attempting to disqualify the law firm, Rainone Coughlin Minchello, from representing three Facebook community group administrators who are political insiders in Rahway.

“They’re suing us for being critics. Not defamation. Not harassment. For criticism,” said Alan Levy, an attorney who, together with his wife, filed suit in September 2024 after they were kicked out of a 20,000-member Facebook group called Rahway Community Voice.

In legal filings, attorneys from the firm argue their claim is based on Levy and Vandever-Levy abusing the legal process to achieve his political ends. Levy is a Republican who’s currently planning to seek an at-large council seat in town, while Vandever-Levy is a progressive Democrat who in 2024 unsuccessfully sought a council seat.

“Plaintiffs are admitted critics of the City of Rahway, its Mayor, and the law firm of Rainone Coughlin Minchello,” the defendants' counterclaim reads. “Plaintiffs routinely post comments on social media sites criticizing the City, its Mayor, and this law firm.”

Now, the ACLU is intervening on the plaintiffs' behalf. The law firm representing the defendants was co-founded by Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, New Jersey’s third-most powerful elected official, and earns millions each year representing local governments, including Rahway’s.

“The public should care because it’s designed to stifle and squelch and chill political speech and criticism,” Levy said.

The ACLU’s involvement is an early attempt to set the precedent for enforcement of the state’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, which former Gov. Phil Murphy signed in 2023 as a way to ensure the powerful can’t “use lawsuits and litigation threats to punish and silence those who might speak unfavorably about them.” (Coughlin, who has no personal involvement in the Levy case, voted in favor of the law along with every other assemblymember present.)

The law is New Jersey's version of an anti-SLAPP statute, an abbreviation for "strategic lawsuit against public participation."

“New Jersey’s long-fought for Anti-SLAPP law was enacted in 2023 to provide procedural protections to New Jerseyans whose constitutional free expression rights have been targeted in the courts because of their public participation,” ACLU Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero said in a statement. “For more than a year, the ACLU of New Jersey has been filing friend-of-the-court briefs in appeals — including in Levy v. O’Reilly — to ensure that trial courts apply the law broadly as the legislature intended.”

Levy is a regular presence at council meetings, where he animatedly criticizes local officials over what he sees as restrictions on speech, even using profanity to illustrate his point at a meeting earlier this month. David Minchello, a named partner at the law firm, sits next to Council President Jeffrey Brooks at the dais and is often a target of Levy’s criticism, along with his law firm.

“We’ve seen in the past year where certain cities, like the City of Edison, humiliated itself on national TV for kicking out a guy for holding up an American flag because they wanted to ban props. And then we had the City of Plainfield that recently embarrassed itself by trying to ban singing, pantomiming and non-verbal speech,” Levy said at a March 2 council meeting. “The fact that the same law firm that represents the City of Rahway happens to represent the City of Edison and the City of Plainfield that are making directed efforts to silence peoples’ speech is humiliating, it’s embarrassing, and it should shock all of you.”

Rainone Coughlin Minchello was founded in January 2017, just months before Coughlin secured the votes to become speaker in 2018. The firm’s client base and revenue from public bodies quickly grew, to $8.1 million in 2024 from $1.8 million in 2017 , according to disclosures filed with the Election Law Enforcement Commission. That year, it reported $650,000 in legal work for Rahway and its redevelopment agency, according to documents the firm filed last year with ELEC, and $15,600 in donations to the Rahway Democratic Organization.

The Levy lawsuit dates to the fall of 2024, when the couple was banned from the Facebook group for allegedly violating its rules by making posts that constituted “political promotions or bashing.” Levy and Vandever-Levy claim the Facebook page, though privately run, is effectively a “town square” in which free speech rights have to be respected.

The Facebook group administrators they initially filed suit against have political connections in town.

Thomas O’Reilly, the first named defendant, is a Rahway library trustee who in 2024 chaired the campaign committee for the city’s Democratic councilmembers, according to public campaign documents. Bill Tomkiewicz is a member of its Zoning Board of Adjustment. And Joanna Papadakis is a former school board member.

In one instance, according to the initial suit, Vandever-Levy, then running in the Democratic primary for council, saw her account suspended until after the primary election, when she compared the newly mandated “office block” ballot structure to the just-invalidated “county line” ballots that New Jersey Democrats and Republicans had relied on for decades to help cement their power. By contrast, the lawsuit provides examples of O’Reilly praising the city’s mayor and councilmembers, including one post he tagged with “#RayhwayDemocrats2024 #VoteColumnA #RahwayDems.”

Levy said all he wanted was for him and his wife to be restored to the Facebook page. They were in talks with Tomkiewicz and Papadakis, according to Levy, both of whom he said had verbally agreed to let them back in. But then Rainone Coughlin Michello, which O’Reilly had initially hired, began representing them, those talks ended.

Levy and Vandever-Levy then attempted to disqualify Rainone Coughlin Minchello from representing the administrators, citing alleged conflicts of interest surrounding its work in Rahway government. Judge Robert Mega denied the motion.

That’s when a minor court fight transformed into something much more serious. The three defendants in July filed a cross-claim against the couple, alleging they had committed “malicious abuse of process” by using the litigation to “intimidate, harass, and abuse the Defendants and Defendants’ counsel,” arguing that Levy and Vandever-Levy had personal vendettas against the city’s leadership and the law firm, using their Facebook posts criticizing officials and the firm as examples.

Levy and Vandever-Levy sought to dismiss those claims based on the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, claiming the plaintiffs tried to hamper their free speech rights through a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

But Mega let the complaint stand. “The Court does not have to decide on the ultimate merits of the proposed counterclaim, but rather if the proposed complaint states a cause of action, not if the party will eventually succeed on the merits,” he wrote. “The Court is satisfied that the proposed counterclaim sufficiently states a cause of action. It is apparent to this Court through the various motions an corresponds submitted by both parties that there is some animosity between counsel for both parties.”

Levy and Vandever-Levy appealed to a higher court. That’s when the New Jersey ACLU stepped in, filing an amicus brief on their behalf.

“Plaintiffs had a right to set forth their theories of conflict, regardless of the ultimate impact of that filing; in other words, even if it could ultimately deprive Defendants of their chosen counsel, such a motion is not an abuse of process, especially when it is based on protected speech,” attorney Bruce Rosen wrote in the ACLU’s brief.

Minchello and Brian Trelease, the firm's attorney who's on the case, declined to comment.

The defendants attempted to prevent the ACLU from entering the case with an amicus brief, writing that “New Jersey courts and beyond have made clear that litigation activity which is undertaken for a collateral or ulterior purpose constitutes the malicious abuse of process.” But according to the ACLU, the appellate granted allowed it to enter the case and to participate in oral argument.