Movement for Family Power & Partners File Appeal on Behalf of Durham Activist, Amanda Wallace, Silenced with No-Contact Order
This appeal was filed by Movement for Family Power, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU of North Carolina on behalf of Amanda Wallace.
The Case
As a former child abuse investigator for the family policing (“child protection”) system, Amanda Wallace has seen firsthand how Black and brown children are disproportionately ripped from loving homes and thrown into the violence-ridden foster system. Now, Amanda is sounding the alarm.
Amanda Wallace is the founder of Operation Stop CPS, a North Carolina-based grassroots campaign that builds people power to abolish the family policing system. She is also a co-founder of the Black Mothers March which convenes hundreds of Black mothers, organizers, advocates, and civil rights attorneys on Mother’s Day in Washington DC to end the US government’s systematic attack on Black women and families.
Over the years, North Carolina has experimented with a range of tactics to shut down Amanda’s organizing and activism – ranging from civil no-contact orders to state misdemeanor and felony charges.
In December 2025, Durham County District Court Judge James Hill granted a civil no-contact order that prohibits Amanda from using certain words like “kidnapper” and “genocide” when protesting, limits Amanda’s ability to access certain common protest sites, including a public park, and restricts her from contacting director of Durham’s “child protection” agency, Maggie Clapp. The no-contact order was granted under North Carolina’s Workplace Violence Prevention Act (WVPA), a law intended to protect victims of intimate partner violence at work—not to silence protestors. With support from Movement for Family Power, over 50 movement partners from across the country packed the Durham County trial courtroom and courthouse in a show of solidarity on the day of Amanda's hearing.
Now, Movement for Family Power, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU of North Carolina are representing Amanda in an appeal of the no-contact order. The appeal argues that the no-contact order violates the First Amendment in two ways. First, by restricting Ms. Wallace’s freedom of movement and speech in response to protected criticism of a public official. And second, by imposing unconstitutional restrictions on her political advocacy, including restrictions on the words she can use. It also argues that the WVPA cannot be leveraged to punish non-violent protest.
Key Documents
Related Media