Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
Teachers ordered by Obama-appointed judge to pay $300K after opposing DEI training: 'Unprecedented' ruling
An Obama-appointed judge ordered two Missouri teachers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to a school district after losing a case regarding mandatory diversity training.
www.foxnews.com
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.
Combine this with the Douglass Mackay who was convicted for a meme that lampooned Clinton voters in 2016, and we are getting to the point at which we will not only be afraid to speak, but as in the case of these teachers, at risk if we argue that we should not be required to agree to enforced speech.
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.
"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.
First of all, Judges are not supposed to "argue" one side or the other in a case. Second, the district was not forced to defend against this case. They could paid the dollar and agreed not to force teachers to self-identify as racists. Third, 300K in legal fees is outrageous for a case like that. Clearly, the law firm padded its fees, correctly guessing that the judge would welcome a change to stick it to two teachers who just wanted to treat their students as individuals and not literally judge them by the color of their skin.
This case is an indirect attack on free speech via a direct attack on the right to have a day in court when you are forced by government/employer to utter or write mandatory speech that violates your principles.
