A former Palatine High School teacher who was fired in the summer of 2020 over her Facebook posts critical of riots and looting that erupted in Chicago amid protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement, has sued the Palatine school district that formerly employed her, saying the district trampled on her First Amendment speech rights.
On July 15, attorneys from conservative political action organization Judicial Watch filed a complaint in Chicago federal court on behalf of Jeanne Hedgepeth. Named defendants include Township High School District 211, and individual defendants including those sitting on the District 211 school board in July 2020 and the district’s superintendent and human resources director.
The suit comes as Hedgepeth also continues to pursue a separate defamation lawsuit in Cook County court against current District 211 board member and Black Lives Matter activist Tim McGowan.
Paul Orfanedes
| Judicial Watch
Both cases center around Hedgepeth’s termination in July 2020 from the teaching job she had held at Palatine High School for 20 years.
According to the new federal complaint, Hedgepeth was vacationing in Florida in late May 2020 when rioters and looters inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damage on Chicago’s central business district and other major corridors in the city. The riots broke out amid widespread protests against racism, triggered by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis earlier that month.
According to the complaint, Hedgepeth then posted photos, memes and other comments critical of the looting and rioting.
For instance, she posted photos of herself on a beach in Florida, captioned: “I don’t want to go home tomorrow. Now that the civil war has begun I want to move.”
She also reposted a meme, created by someone else, saying authorities seeking to stop rioters should “mobilize the septic trucks, put a pressure cannon on em… hose em down… the end.” Hedgepeth added the comment: “You think this would work?”
In June, Hedgepeth added more in-depth comments on Facebook, as part of a discussion.
Those said, in part:
“I find the term ‘white privilege’ as racist as the ‘N’ word. You have not walked in my shoes either so do not make assumptions about me and my so called privilege. You think America is racist? Then you have been hoodwinked by the white liberal establishment and race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Travel the world and go see that every nation has racism and some more than others but few make efforts such as we do to mitigate or eliminate it.”
She added: “Don’t you think there is a deeper problem than racism when 50% of murders in America are committed by 13% of the population? Do you think there might be a subtle genocide of black babies when most planned parenthoods are put in poor neighborhoods and that 30% of abortions are black babies. [B]lack women only make up 7% of the U.S. population. The greatest power you have is what you believe about yourself. [W]hat have Democrats, mainstream media and intellectuals in ivory towers been telling the black community to believe about themselves for forty years? Wake up and stop believing them, then things will change.”
The complaint noted all of Hedgepeth’s comments were on her personal Facebook page, and she did not identify herself as a teacher or employee of Palatine High School District 211. Further, none of the people she engaged with in those posts were District 211 students or employees.
However, the complaint said Hedgepeth was immediately placed under investigation by the school district, and was fired by the school board about one month later, with the school board citing her Facebook posts as justification.
In her defamation lawsuit against McGowan, Hedgepeth accused McGowan of falsely smearing her as a racist, and then orchestrating a campaign against her that resulted in her termination. McGowan had organized “anti-racism” protests in Palatine in the summer of 2020 under the banner of BLM.
He posted a video to Facebook in which he laid out accusations of racism against Hedgepeth.
McGowan was elected to the District 211 school board in November 2020, thanks to support from the District 211 teachers union.
In her federal lawsuit against the District 211 board, Hedgepeth asserts the board’s decision to fire her over personal Facebook posts amounts to a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights.
Hedgepeth’s “protected speech was a substantial or motivating factor in (District 211’s) decision to terminate Plaintiff’s employment, and, but for Plaintiff’s protected speech, Defendants would not have terminated Plaintiff’s employment,” Hedgepeth’s lawsuit asserts.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory damages from District 2011 and punitive damages against District 211 human resources director James A. Britton; District 211 school board members Kimberly Cavill, Anna Klimkowicz, Robert J. Lefevre Jr., Edward M. Yung and Steven Rosenblum; and District 211 Superintendent Lisa A. Small.
Hedgepeth is represented in the federal action by attorneys Paul J. Orfanedes, of Judicial Watch, of Washington, D.C., and Christine Svenson, of Svenson Law Offices, of Palatine.
She is represented in the Cook County defamation case by attorney Joel F. Handler, of the Handler Law Group, of Chicago.