CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Albemarle County Public Schools Chief Legal Officer Josiah Black is on leave, ACPS spokesperson Jason Grant confirmed to Cville Right Now on Wednesday.

While Grant did not give a reason for the leave, Black, along with ACPS’s Assistant School Division Counsel and former Title IX Coordinator Erin Stone and the Albemarle County School Board, were named in a federal civil rights lawsuit last Thursday by the family of an ACPS student with autism.

The suit alleges that the student was sexually assaulted in class on their second day in a county high school in August 2025, that the division never reported the assault to law enforcement or Child Protective Services and that it refused to separate the victim from their assailant.

Grant told Cville Right Now last Thursday the division does not comment on ongoing legal matters.

The suit also alleges ACPS withheld the student’s promised supportive measures and left them without “meaningful instruction” or special education services for around three months.

The suit said ACPS even conditioned the family’s annual IEP meeting and speicial education placement on signing an agreement “to release all claims against the School Board, keep the agreement confidential, refrain from ‘disparaging’ the division, and communicate only through designated staff,” according to the release.

The release said the student’s parents repeatedly reached out to Black and Stone, as well as then-Superintendent Dr. Matthew Haas, Special Education Coordinator Ruth Tapscott, and School Board members Dr. Kate Acuff, Jack Jouett representative and then-Chair, and Dr. Rebecca Berlin, White Hall representative and then-Vice Chair who is now the board’s Chair.

Despite this, the suit said it was only after intervention from the Virginia Department of Education that ACPS agreed to convene the IEP team and provide the required special education.

Stone was already on administrative leave after she was arrested on Oct. 7 along with Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer Brodie Downs and former Hollymead Principal Joe McCauley on charges of failure to report a case of child abuse.

A graduate and former director of admissions of the University of Virginia School of Law, Black has been with ACPS since December 2023.