School Contractor Allegedly Fired for Complaining About Drag Show for Students in Grades 7-12
From Monday’s decision by Judge Edmond Chang (N.D. Ill.) in Lopez v. Fasana:
[According to the Complaint,] April Lopez worked at Disney II Magnet High School as a chief engineer from October 2021 through April 2023. Although the school takes the name “High School,” the school teaches students from Grade 7 through 12. She was not a direct employee of the Chicago Public Schools system; instead, she worked for Eco-Alpha, a subcontractor of Jones Lang LaSalle (the giant real-estate services company).
During the early morning of April 28, 2023, before students arrived at school, Lopez saw a poster for a drag show for students posted in a hallway. She said to one of her colleagues, “I cannot get on board with that.” Vice Principal Matt Fasana overheard the comment and “expressed anger at her point of view.” Then, later that morning, Lopez approached Fasana and directly “expressed her concern over having a drag show at a school with children as young as 12.”
That conversation allegedly triggered a series of reports up the command chain—all on the same day, April 28—eventually leading to Eco-Alpha terminating Lopez’s employment….
Lopez sued the school officials, and the court allowed the case to go forward:
Generally speaking, government employers may not retaliate against their employees (or contractors) for exercising their right to free speech. {The parties do not dispute that Lopez is a government contractor and her claim receives the same analysis as government employees.} … To plausibly state a claim for First Amendment retaliation, Lopez must allege that her speech was constitutionally protected, that she suffered an adverse action or that she suffered a deprivation likely to deter free speech, and that the protected conduct was at least a motivating factor behind the adverse action….
If Lopez was speaking pursuant to her official duties, then she has no retaliation claim, because that kind of speech—for First Amendment purposes—is considered to be government speech. If, on the other hand, she plausibly alleges that she was speaking as a private citizen on a matter of public concern, then the
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