Missouri attorney says judge’s ruling is meant to ‘chill speech’
An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered two Missouri teachers opposing a school district’s mandatory diversity training to shell out over $300,000 in legal fees.
Teachers opposed the training that allegedly contained content forcing them to place themselves on an “oppression matrix.” The material also allegedly called for socio-economic changes and asked teachers to share information they wished to keep private.
Brooke Henderson was one of the two fighting back against the training she said encouraged her to believe that America is systemically racist.
“If we believed in a colorblind America, [it told us] that we are White supremacists, and it really just felt like there was no hope and that the wheels had come off the bus of what our job as educators was,” she said.
Henderson, who said she has taught for over 20 years, said the training was district-wide, impacting employees ranging from bus drivers to cafeteria workers, custodial crew members, teachers and everyone else employed in the district.
Federal district judge Douglas Harpool, who presided over the case, awarded $313,000 in attorney fees to the school district, arguing the district deserved to be compensated for being forced to defend against the case.
“It’s absolutely excessive,” said Southeastern Legal Foundation general counsel Kimberly Hermann, who represented the plaintiffs.
“The point of it is to chill speech. This is a First Amendment case in the first place where our clients were required to attest and affirm to ideas they just simply don’t believe in. They believe that America should be colorblind. They believe that they should not have to look at the color of the student’s skin, and that’s all that they were fighting for.”
The plaintiffs, according to Hermann, sought only $1 in damages and were instead solely focused on getting a judge to declare the training unconstitutional.
So much for describing America as “the land of the free”.
I was happy to read they appealed it the ruling.