Judge tosses white teacher’s discrimination lawsuit against District 65

(Editor’s Note: This story was reported by Duncan Agnew for the Evanston Roundtable, a neighboring independent newsroom. It was shared with The Record as part of an ongoing collaborative effort.)

A federal judge on Friday sided with a local school district in dismissing a lawsuit brought by a white drama teacher, Stacy Deemar of Wilmette, who accused the district of racial discrimination and an “ongoing racially hostile environment” because of its racial equity policies and curriculum.

Judge John J. Tharp Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, ruling that Deemar was not targeted or denied benefits by the district’s activities.

Deemar filed the lawsuit in June 2021 claiming that Evanston/Skokie District 65’s “race-based programming” — including anti-racism training for staff members, the Black Lives Matter at School Week, discussions about white privilege, racial affinity groups, and administrators reading the book “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo — was “conditioning individuals to see each other’s skin color first and foremost, then pitting different racial groups against each other.”

In the suit, she accused the D65 School Board, then-Superintendent Devon Horton, Deputy Superintendent LaTarsha Green and Assistant Superintendent Stacy Beardsley, of “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive racial harassment through mandatory race-based training, race-conscious student curriculum, segregated staff meetings and affinity groups, privilege walks, and frequent and repeated affirmation by Defendants about the District’s commitment to making racial distinctions among students and staff.”

Deemar, who was represented by the conservative nonprofit Southeastern Legal Foundation, claimed District 65 was violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and sought to order the district “to remedy the effects of the unconstitutional, illegal, discriminatory conduct described herein.”

But Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, ruled Friday that Deemar “was not personally subject to racial staff affinity groups, not treated differently from others in terms of her exposure to the school’s race-conscious lesson plans for students and teachers, and otherwise not denied any tangible benefits or targeted for negative treatment on account of her race.”

Dismissed without prejudice

Citing those reasons, Tharp granted District 65’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but he did so without prejudice, meaning that Deemar has until Sept. 6 to file an amended complaint with a different explanation for why she has the legal standing to sue the district for allegedly creating a “hostile educational environment.”

The drama teacher, who at the time of the suit was at Nichols Elementary and now teaches at Lincoln Elementary, claimed the hostile environment she faced violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Notably, Title VI excludes workplace discrimination claims, which Tharp wrote is “undoubtedly” why Deemar filed a hostile educational environment claim instead.

But she is not a student, and “she has not plausibly alleged that she suffered from a hostile environment such that it denied her from receiving educational benefits,” (emphasis in ruling), Tharp concluded.

After it was filed, Deemar’s lawsuit prompted widespread condemnation from Evanston leaders and a protest in July 2021 in James Park.

“Evanston children are not pawns or some kind of canvas for Tucker Carlson to paint his white supremacist fantasy on,” Mayor Daniel Biss said that day, according to reporting by Evanston Patch.

In its immediate response to the lawsuit, the district released a statement calling it “baseless and inflammatory,” and “part of a concerted national effort by the Georgia-based Southeastern Legal Foundation to target racial equity-based initiatives in K-12 schools.”

The school board and Horton at the time also linked Deemar’s suit to reported threats against Horton, including “two voice messages containing racial slurs” and a broken car window.

In dismissing her claims, Tharp also reviewed a 2016 drama department meeting recounted in Deemar’s complaint at which Deemar said she brought up concerns she had about a book that drama teachers were required to read, “Drama of Color,” by Johnny Saldaña.

When she mentioned her apprehension about the book’s focus on racism perpetrated by white kids and adults, “her colleagues interrupted her, rolled their eyes, and told Plaintiff she did not know what she was talking about,” according to the lawsuit.

“The complaint does not identify any state action related to this episode, nor does Deemar explain how her treatment is traceable to the District’s actions or on the basis of her race, rather than her speech,” Tharp ruled. “Therefore, these allegations do not suffice to establish Deemar’s standing to pursue her discrimination claim.”

Representatives of both District 65 and the Southeastern Legal Foundation did not immediately respond to RoundTable requests for comment on the case’s dismissal.

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