A longtime volunteer for the town of Milton filed a federal lawsuit against the town this week alleging officials there violated his right to free speech and retaliated against him when they didn’t reappoint him to his long-held roles on local committees.
The lawsuit turns a spat over volunteer appointments into a dispute over political speech. It calls into question whether local officials can deny someone a public role because he criticized them in their capacities as state lawmakers. Bonges argues the town of Milton crossed a constitutional line.
The saga started in April 2025 when Henry Bonges sent an email to his state representatives — who also sit on the local selectboard — urging them not to vote on climate policies in the Vermont Statehouse like “R automatons,” apparently meaning Republican robots.
Bonges had volunteered for the town for more than forty years before he sent that email. In the following months, selectboard members declined to re-appoint him to two of his three local positions. And Bonges thinks he wasn’t reappointed solely because he didn’t pass their “ideological purity test,” he said previously.
This week, Bonges took the local spat to federal court.
He filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the town of Milton and Town Manager Chris Taylor, alleging that local officials violated Bonges’ first amendment rights by retaliating against him for his political speech. Taylor recently served as a state representative.
Bonges said that he believes politicians on the national level are routinely violating people’s civil rights. He doesn’t want local government to follow suit, he said, and he felt an obligation to take legal action to stand up for his own rights.
“I feel it’s, you know, something I have to do,” he said.
The lawsuit is based on the argument that the First Amendment prohibits public officials from retaliating against volunteers for personal political speech.
“There shouldn’t be a political litmus test for whether he gets to volunteer,” said Jay Diaz, one of Bonges’ lawyers, in an interview.
Taylor did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.
The lawsuit comes as Bonges is in the running to represent Milton in the Vermont House as a Democrat. He’s running in a different House district than the state representatives (also selectboard members) that he criticized in the past.
His lawsuit outlines the fallout between Bonges and town officials.
In 2025, Vermont lawmakers proposed to repeal provisions of the Global Warming Solutions Act, which sets a legal mandate for the state to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.
At the time, Bonges had spent the last four decades volunteering to represent Milton on the region’s recycling center board, the state transportation board and on local and regional planning commissions.
In April of last year, Bonges sent an email to his state representatives asking them to support the act. In part of his email, Bonges wrote, “Vote so you can look your children and grandchildren in the eye when stuff starts hitting the fan big time, that you did what you could to address the issue which will ruin their lives.”
The email was addressed to those who represent Milton in the Statehouse, including the three Republicans who sit on Milton’s Selectboard: Reps. Brenda Steady; Leland Morgan; and Michael Morgan. He also included Town Manager Taylor, who was a representative at the time.
The next month, Bonges’ position on The Chittenden Solid Waste Commission, the region’s recycling center board, was up for reappointment by the town’s selectboard. When the reappointment came up during a selectboard meeting, Leland Morgan took the mic.
“You’ve made it very public that you hold at least four of the five of us in high disdain,” he said, referring to Bonges. “And it makes me wonder whether you could do a good job for us with the feelings that you have toward us.”
At subsequent town meetings, Bonges criticized the selectboard members and said they were unable to separate their roles on the town’s board from their roles as state representatives. Bonges was never reappointed to his previously held positions.
In his lawsuit, Bonges argues that the city retaliated against him for his political opinions. Bonges’ political speech “was a substantial motivating factor in (the selectboard’s) official decision to deny his reappointment and remove him,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit argues that the alleged retaliation violated both Bonges’ rights under both the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 13 of the Vermont Constitution, which also protects free speech.
Steady, Leland Morgan and Michael Morgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Bonges is seeking monetary compensation to compensate him for “unconstitutional interference with and infringement of his rights,” the lawsuit says.
While Bonges is running as a Democrat for the Chittenden-Franklin seat in the Vermont House, which includes part of Milton and part of the town of Georgia, he said in an interview that his lawsuit is not politically motivated.
“This lawsuit actually has nothing to do with me trying to win the House,” Bonges said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Chris Taylor’s tenure as a state representative.
