U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nancy L. Maldonado
CHICAGO - A federal appeals court has ruled that a suburban school district did not violate the First Amendment rights of a teacher who was fired after anti-Black Lives Matter posts she made on her personal Facebook page concerning the George Floyd riots in 2020, because judges said school officials correctly determined those posts were "inflammatory" and had made high school students and others in the school community angry enough to protest and harm the learning environment.
On Aug. 27, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied former Palatine High School teacher Jeanne Hedgepeth's bid to resurrect her lawsuit against Township High School District 211 and D211 school board members and administrators.
In the ruling, the appellate judges agreed with D211 that district officials did not improperly bow to the demands of activists, students and others when they fired Hedgepeth from the job she had held for 20 years.
The ruling was authored by Seventh Circuit Judge Nancy L. Maldonado, an appointee of former President Joe Biden. She was joined in the decision by judges Michael Y. Scudder and Kenneth F. Ripple.
Scudder was appointed to the court by President Donald Trump during his first term in office. Ripple was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.
In the ruling, Maldonado said Hedgepeth, as a public school teacher, enjoyed a "unique position of trust," which she said should mean the First Amendment protections normally applied to individual speech may not apply to her, should her taxpayer-funded employer determine her speech has caused a community uproar and jeopardizes the school district's educational environment.
Evidence supplied by D2011 "shows that Hedgepeth did not lose her job because she expressed her views on a matter of public concern on Facebook," Maldonado wrote. "Rather, she lost her job because she posted a series of vulgar, intemperate, and racially insensitive messages to a large audience of recent PHS alumni.
"The District’s undisputed evidence demonstrated that these posts predictably rippled throughout the community causing substantial disruption among current students and faculty and at school board meetings, even attracting local and international media attention. Emphasizing that this was Hedgepeth’s third strike and not an isolated incident, the District reasonably concluded that the scope and intensity of the disruption created an insurmountable barrier to the high school’s learning environment in the fast-approaching academic year," and fired Hedgepeth.
Hedgepeth has been in court against District 211 since July 2021, when she first filed suit against the district in Chicago federal court. She has been represented in that action by attorneys with the conservative political action organization, Judicial Watch.
That lawsuit had come on the heels of a separate action she had brought against current District 211 board member and Black Lives Matter activist Tim McGowan, who she blamed for launching the effort to get her fired. That lawsuit would eventually be dismissed by a Cook County Circuit Court judge.
According to the federal complaint, Hedgepeth was illegally targeted for termination for comments she posted to Facebook critical of widespread rioting, looting and other unrest in Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S. in 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in the custody of police.
In those comments, among others, Hedgepeth called for rioters to be "hosed down" with liquid human waste by septic trucks.
She further posted longer comments discussing her displeasure with the use of terms like "white privilege," critical of those who characterized the U.S. as systematically racist, and questioning why discussions on race cannot include statistical information concerning the murder rate among the black population, nor the abortion rate.
The lawsuit noted all of Hedgepeth's comments were posted on her personal Facebook page, and she did not identify herself as a teacher or employee of District 211 or Palatine High School.
However, the complaint claimed Hedgepeth was immediately placed under investigation and ultimately fired by the school board, with the board citing her Facebook posts as justification.
In federal district court in 2024, U.S. District Judge Manish S. Shah sided with D211, saying Hedgepeth's free speech rights fall short when compared against the interest of the school district in minimizing disruption to the learning environment.
Shah agreed with the school district's hearing officer, who drew up the case against Hedgepeth, that her "conduct was irremediable because it 'compromised, beyond repair ... her ability to continue to function effectively in her role' and her posts 'destroyed any possibility that she could be viewed as a fair and honest arbiter in the students' expressions of different perspectives.'"
Hedgepeth and her attorneys appealed that ruling to the Seventh Circuit, arguing the decision to allow D211 to fire her in response to the uproar over her personal social media comments grants activists, students and others unhappy with her speech an unconstitutional "heckler's veto."
They said allowing her termination to stand would silence Hedgepeth and other public school employees from expressing views that may be politically unpopular within a public school, school district or community, or be considered "inflammatory" by students, activists or others.
In the appellate ruling, however, Maldonado rejected that assertion, saying the "heckler's veto" reasoning should only apply if the speech triggers a response from outside the school community.
Schools can fire employees over their speech without violating the First Amendment if a "disruption" to the learning environment is triggered by students or others within the school unhappy with a teacher's speech, Maldonado ruled.
"(Palatine High School) community members, including current students who predictably saw her posts, 'are not ‘outsiders seeking to heckle [Hedgepeth] into silence, rather they are participants in public education, without whose cooperation public education as a practical matter cannot function,'" Maldonado wrote, citing a 2013 Seventh Circuit decision in the case docketed as Craig v Rich Township High School District 227.
It is not known if Hedgepeth and her attorneys will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.
Hedgepeth's attorneys and Judicial Watch did not respond to requests for comment on the decision from The Record.
District 211 and its school board members and administrators were represented in the action by attorneys William R. Pokorny, Sally J. Scott and Hailey M. Golds, of the firm of Franczek P.C., of Chicago.
