Two teachers are suing Duval Schools after the district removed them from their classrooms over social media posts they made following conservative media personality Charlie Kirk’s shooting death in September. 

The suits, filed in federal court Monday, allege Duval Schools violated the teachers’ First and 14th Amendment rights when it “unfairly targeted” teachers Hope McMath and Haley Bartlett for speech that their attorney, John Phillips, says is protected. 

“From a First Amendment perspective, from a constitutional perspective, equal rights and privileges, what’s going on here is disgusting,” Phillips said at a news conference announcing the suits Monday.

McMath’s suit names five DCPS school board members, the Florida Department of Education, state Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas and the local and national chapters of the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty.

The named school board members are Charlotte Joyce, April Carney, Reginald Blount, Melody Bolduc and Tony Ricardo. All five are endorsed by Moms for Liberty.

District spokesperson Sonya Duke-Bolden declined to comment Monday, citing the pending suits. 

Representatives from the state education department and Moms for Liberty did not respond to requests for comment by this story’s publication.

Questions around complaints

McMath, who teaches AP Art History part-time at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, has been reassigned to administrative duty since mid-September. Bartlett, a paraprofessional who works with children on the autism spectrum at Oak Hill Academy, was pulled from her classroom in early October. 

The circumstances that led the district to remove the teachers remain unclear. 

In McMath’s case, Action News reported at first that her Sept. 15 removal came after a Facebook post criticizing Jacksonville City Council member Rory Diamond over his proposal to limit city spending on undocumented immigrants and on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In her post, she referred to Diamond as a “grand wizard,” a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.

Later, during conversations with district investigators, Phillips and McMath say they learned DCPS opened its investigation in response to a Sept. 12 complaint from Moms for Liberty, which the group sent to various district and state officials. 

The message, which Jacksonville Today obtained screenshots of from a recipient, says Moms for Liberty members were initially concerned about a post McMath made after Kirk’s death. The Facebook post said, “Karma’s a b**** – and she heard all your speeches when you proudly proclaimed that you didn’t give a s*** about other people’s lives.” 

“We didn’t feel like that alone warranted a letter to you,” the email reads. “However, a deeper dive into Ms. McMath’s posts have found us deeply concerned about bringing her personal (and radical) views into the classroom.”  

Phillips said Monday that the district has not provided the Moms for Liberty complaint to him or his client, despite repeated requests. Jacksonville Today also requested the complaint but has not received it. 

The legal filing says McMath told her students that they were not allowed to follow her on social media, and blocked students or parents she saw that did follow her. 

Bartlett was removed Oct. 6 after reposting a TikTok post after Kirk’s death. On Monday, Bartlett said the post emphasized “there are bigger issues” than Kirk’s death.

“I did not agree with almost anything that he said, but I didn’t agree that he should have died that way,” Bartlett said. “But the point was that I did not agree with the man and that there are other issues.”

According to the lawsuit, Duval Schools has told Bartlett “nothing about her Complaint, her complainant, or the status of any investigation.”  

Bartlett said she spends seven hours a day sitting alone in a large room with no windows at the district’s headquarters. The legal complaint characterizes it as “isolation for hours a day as punishment as a result of a political debate where an unknown complainant felt offended.”

“My mental health has gone down dramatically,” Bartlett, 20, said Monday. “I mean, you can imagine having to sit in an empty room with no windows for seven hours every day for two months? That’ll do something to you.”

Comparing speech

The teachers’ lawsuits also seem to question whether there’s a double standard in the district for who is allowed to express political speech and who is not — by referring to the October school board meeting, where four members wore bright pink T-shirts that read “This is the Turning Point.”

School Board Chair Joyce said the idea for the shirts came to her as she watched the memorial service for Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to promote political conservatism among college students.

From the dais during that meeting, Joyce said she’d asked the board in a group chat who wanted shirts. 

Jacksonville Today received a copy of the message through a public records request. In it, members Carney, Bolduc and Blount replied “yes.” Carney and Bolduc wore their shirts to the Oct. 7 meeting. Blount did not. He didn’t respond to a request asking why.

The lawsuits cite a few legal precedents that favor teachers’ free speech — notably the 1968 Supreme Court case Pickering v. Board of Education, which ruled in favor of an Illinois teacher who was fired after writing a letter critical of his school district to the editor of his local newspaper. 

The suits also cite the case of Thomas Caggiano, a math teacher at Jacksonville’s Sandalwood High School. Caggiano was suspended without pay about five years ago for social media posts The Florida Times-Union described at the time as “transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic and racist.” Caggiano appealed the decisions, and earlier this year, Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal sided with him.

At the Duval County School Board’s October meeting, members voted to approve a $340,000 settlement with Caggiano. 

Phillips said Caggiano’s case is similar to McMath’s and Bartlett’s. His social media posts, though, criticized left-leaning politicians and liberal issues.

“Where we are is a quandary, and I want people on the left and right to realize it goes both ways,” Phillips said.