My question involves slander in the state of: Maryland
I am a high school coach who has been falsely accused of racism by the parent of a player whom is disgruntled about their child's playing time. The player played in over 90% of the games this season, but she didn't play where her dad wanted to and it made him very upset. During the season he had confronted me in the parking lot several times. He also sent threatening and disparaging (both about me and my players) text messages. These were reported to the school administration and the parent was brought in by the AD and told to stop. After the texts didn't stop I informed him that I would file a harassment charge with the police if it continued. After that he finally stopped, but then he went to the head of athletics for the county and claimed I was "being racist towards his daughter" and "ran the team with a racist attitude that kept black kids from wanting to play." I met with him and our administration and he had absolutely no facts to back up his accusations, which is not surprising since they aren't based on reality. He's just a frustrated parent who's kid isn't playing as well as he'd like and he's apparently gone off the deep end lashing out at me. While I'm glad that the school has looked into these accusations and cleared my name in their mind, I'm very concerned that these false allegations could continue to haunt me in the future as the high school coach, a travel coach, professionally in my day job and in my day to day life in the community.
My questions are:
Do I have grounds for filing a slander suit against this parent?
If so, am I just going to end up burning my own money up in the process or would I be able to make him pay for the cost of the lawsuit if I were to win? I don't have any desire to make money here, in fact I would be willing to spend some to publicly clear my name, but I certainly can't afford to run up thousands of dollars in legal bills to do so.
thanks,
Frustrated Coach![]()

