A Chicago federal judge has indicated he may soon decide whether a white Evanston middle school teacher can continue to press her claims in court that the Evanston/Skokie elementary school district’s “anti-racism” curriculum, programs and policies have created a hostile work environment rife with anti-white racial discrimination.
At the same time, plaintiff Stacey Deemar has fired back against the efforts of the Evanston/Skokie District 65 to get her lawsuit tossed, laying out, once again, a litany of instances in which she accuses the school district of allegedly dividing educators and students by race, and then castigating her and other educators simply for being white.
“On a daily basis, the District reminds Plaintiff that she is white,” Deemar wrote in a brief filed on Oct. 20. “And on a daily basis, the District assigns exclusively negative characteristics to whiteness, such as racism, oppression, and evil.”
Deemar, a middle school drama teacher at District 65, filed suit against the district in June. According to court documents, Deemar has worked at the district since 2002, and is now considered a part time faculty member.
The lawsuit also names as defendants District 65 Superintendent Devon Horton, Deputy Superintendent Latarsha Green, and Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Stacy Beardsley.
District 65 operates 18 schools, with more than 8,000 students from preschool to eighth grade.
The complaint asserts the curriculum and training programs violate the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights laws, by actively dividing students and staff by race, and discriminating against white school staff members and students.
The complaint asserts the curriculum and training programs create an environment in which “whiteness” is treated as negative and wrong, while “non-white racial identity” carries “positive traits.”
Deemar’s complaint claims the district’s curriculum, program and policies encourage racism and discrimination among students and staff, directed at white people. That, Deemar said, creates a hostile work environment for her and other white employees in District 65.
District 65 responded by asking U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. to dismiss Deemar’s lawsuit, claiming she shouldn’t be allowed to sue because she never “personally suffered an injury” from the district’s anti-racism system.
Further, the district claimed Deemar had misinterpreted its programs and positions, which the district said was intended to rectify racial inequities and disparities among its students.
And District 65 asserted Deemar did not personally participate in race-based discussion seminars or “affinity groups,” did not regularly attend “staff meetings … when discussions of equity and race took place;” and was not personally compelled to teach assigned lessons for “Black Lives Matter Week” at her school, nor read from books she found objectionable or racially divisive.
“… This lawsuit is a blatant attempt to use the federal courts for the improper purpose of challenging curriculum that Deemar, and others, disagree with for political and/or philosophical reasons,” the district wrote in its motion to dismiss.
Deemar in reply, said it doesn’t matter under federal law whether she personally was targeted by the district’s policies to press claims of illegal racial discrimination and harassment.
Nor did she personally need to feel compelled to have participated “in every activity” or have taught “every lesson … for the environment to rise to the level of being actionable” under federal civil rights law.
She noted she personally “has attended numerous equity-oriented trainings and staff meetings over the years…”
In this instance, she said, the environment within District 65 has become steeped in hostility toward white people, with emails promoting racially divisive books, programs and “discussion questions like, ‘How will you ensure that when common white patterns surface (distancing, intellectualizing, rationalizing), you will work to identify and challenge them rather than ignore or avoid them?”
“The District has classified every individual into racial groups and assigned moral characteristics because of skin color,” Deemar wrote. “Just because Plaintiff is but one of many individuals the District subjected to stigmatizing racial classifications, it does not mean Plaintiff’s harm was not individualized.
“If anything, it demonstrates that the environment the District maintained was suffused with racial hostility…”
In an order issued Oct. 21, Judge Dow indicated he would rule on the motion to dismiss sometime after the two sides finish filing briefs over a dispute involving whether the court should accept a declaration submitted by Beardsley over the extent of Deemar’s participation in alleged racially hostile training sessions or academic assignments.
That briefing is expected to be completed on Nov. 17.
Deemar is represented by attorneys Kimberly S. Hermann, B. H. Boucek, and Celia H. O’Leary, of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, of Roswell, Ga.; and by attorneys Whitman H. Brisky and Terry S. Lu, of the firm of Mauck & Baker, of Chicago.
District 65 and its officials are represented by attorneys Nicki B. Bazer, Michael A. Warner and R. Jason Patterson, of the firm Franczek P.C., of Chicago.