A court has been asked to determine that a California school district is in contempt of court for refusing to reinstate several whistleblower teachers – which it has failed to do despite a court determination it was violating their constitutional rights.
The report comes from the Thomas More Society, which is fighting on behalf of the teachers.
The school involved is the Escondido Union School District and Rincon Middle School.
Officials there have refused to allow teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West to safely return to work.
It was six months ago they were placed on administrative leave and two months ago a federal court held that the district was violating their rights, the report said.
Paul Jonna, counsel for the organization, explained, “Within a week of resolving the first administrative complaint against Lori, EUSD said that a new complaint had been filed, that it had to investigate. The school district can investigate all it wants, but it cannot use frivolous, serial complaints as an end-run around the court’s order.”
Further, Jonna added, “Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West have been vilified, harassed and targeted since they spoke up for the rights of parents, students, and teachers—like themselves. Rather than protecting their employees, EUSD has done nothing to ensure their safety and has turned a blind eye to the threats and discrimination targeting them.”
He said, “With the lack of any good faith action of the part of Escondido Union School District, but rather, an exhibition of lack of compliance with court orders, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West have no recourse but to turn to the court issuing those orders to request that these school district officials be called to account for ignoring them.”
It was Judge Roger Benitez in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California that issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the teachers, ordering the school to “restrain any governmental employee or entity from taking any adverse employment actions thereupon against Plaintiffs Mirabelli or West, until further Order of this Court.”
Jonna said the expectation was that the school would return the teachers to the classroom.
“In issuing the injunction, the court recognized that being precluded from doing your job is ‘irreparable harm’—harm that can never be undone. But the district has refused to bring them back into the classroom,” he said.
They got into trouble with administrators for being on the wrong side of Joe Biden’s promotion of transgenderism.
Specifically, they raised concerns about a district demand for them to hide students’ gender dysphoria situations from parents.
The teachers now are suing the school, district and state officials for violating the Constitution’s Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses.
