The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Thursday that it filed a lawsuit against the Montgomery County Board of Education and Montgomery County Public Schools challenging the administrative leave and investigation of three teachers who shared pro-Palestinian views on social media and email signatures.
CAIR attorneys, who are representing the three teachers, aim for the lawsuit to influence the district to reinstate the educators to their positions and issue them public apologies, said CAIR attorney Rawda Fawaz. CAIR is a Washington, D.C.-based national non-profit civil rights and advocacy organization representing Muslim American liberties, according to the CAIR website.
Fawaz said at a press conference at CAIR’s Baltimore office that MCPS “unlawfully” punished the teachers for their viewpoints “regarding the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.” The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
“They’ve acted to suppress viewpoints critical of Israel and the daily massacres that we’re all watching unfold in abject horror,” Fawaz said. “This is a textbook violation of the First Amendment.”
MCPS spokesperson Chris Cram said in an email Thursday that due to personnel privacy law, he is “prohibited from providing specifics concerning any individual employee discipline” and commenting on ongoing litigation.
Board of Education spokesperson Helen Lloyd also responded by email Thursday, writing that the board “cannot comment on personnel matters and even though this is a lawsuit it still involves personnel.”
The lawsuit stems from ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which was triggered by the Oct. 7 deadly attacks by Hamas militants against Israeli communities that killed around 1,200 people. About 250 hostages were taken. Following the attacks, Israel responded with air strikes across the Gaza strip and a military campaign that experts say is among one of the most deadly and destructive in recent history.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland voiced its support for the lawsuit on Thursday.
“The ACLU of Maryland commends and supports CAIR’s effort to protect the First Amendment rights of teachers in Montgomery County,” Nick Taichi Steiner, senior staff attorney with ACLU of Maryland, said in a press statement. “While CAIR defends the rights of teachers to speak out, we are working to ensure that students across the state, especially Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) students, are able to speak their truth and share their opinions without being punished for those views, as these MCPS teachers have been punished.”
CAIR’s lawsuit also named other MCPS leaders including chief operating officer Brian Hull, associate superintendent Peter Moran, chief of human resources and development April Key, Westland Middle School Principal Alison Serino and Takoma Park Middle School Principal Erin Martin.
The teachers involved are Hajur El-Haggan, a math teacher at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring; Anike Robinson, an art and English teacher at Westland Middle School in Bethesda; and Angela Wolf, the department head of English Language Development at Takoma Park Middle School. All three teachers are on administrative leave, according to Cram.
In December, Robinson and Wolf were placed on administrative leave for social media posts that the district, as well as some in the Jewish and Israeli communities, called antisemitic. That same month, CAIR and El-Haggan filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for discrimination after she was placed on administrative leave allegedly for including, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” in her email signature. The complaint said that other MCPS employees had included political and social viewpoints in email signatures (not pertaining to the Israel-Hamas war), but she was the only known employee to be disciplined.
“From the river to the sea” is a phrase that is often used by pro-Palestinian activists who say that it calls for peace and the right to free movement across the Palestinian territories. Some Jews and Israelis view the phrase as a call for the elimination and destruction of the Jewish state, according to the American Jewish Committee.
In November, Congress voted 234-188 to censure U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, over her use of the phrase; the motion accused her of “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
When the EEOC complaint was first filed, Guila Franklin Siegel, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington, said in December that the phrase “is not merely a benign expression of support for the Palestinian people” and “has no place in the official signature block of an MCPS employee.”
A fourth teacher, Sabrina Khan-Williams of Tilden Middle School in Rockville, was also place on administrative leave in November after her social media posts went viral for their alleged antisemitic content in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. She is not involved in the lawsuit.
Fawaz told MoCo360 that CAIR does not solicit clients and was approached by El-Haggan, Robinson and Wolf with their complaints.
At the press conference at the CAIR Maryland headquarters in Baltimore, El-Haggan, Robinson and Wolf expressed their continued advocacy for Palestine and the desire to return to the classroom and their students.
“The anger, sadness and frustration are unparalleled,” Wolf said. “Montgomery County Public Schools publicly maligned my character and took me away from a job and the people to whom I have dedicated my heart and mind because of one opinion.”
Wolf also stated that the allegations that she is antisemitic were false, and she deserved to have her name cleared.
Robinson recounted a story about resolving a conflict between a Muslim and a Jewish student at her school this school year. She said that she asked them to help design a symbol of their unity, open-mindedness and problem solving, she said. The symbol, which was of a palm-shaped amulet, or a Hamsa, that one student brought from Israel, was later tattooed on her arm, Robinson said.
“The important thing to remember today is that our educational systems thrive on critical thinking. And I’ve been creating safe environments for my students for decades, day after day,” she said.
In a statement on behalf of JCRC, Siegel said the latest lawsuit from CAIR “blatantly disregards the education and wellbeing of Jewish children and families in Maryland’s largest school district.”
“Students of all backgrounds and faiths have the right to feel respected and supported inside and outside the classroom, and MCPS has clear policies to ensure that educators safeguard that right on their personal and official communications channels,” Siegel wrote. “MCPS has both the authority and the responsibility to fully and impartially investigate any potential infractions.
“In a time when antisemitism is running rampant in Montgomery County and across the nation, CAIR’s lawsuit would sustain what these longstanding school policies seek to avoid: students feeling unsafe and under attack simply because of their identity,” the statement said.
When the teachers were placed on leave, individual schools notified their respective school communities with a letter which said that they were aware of the “antisemitic” social media posts from a staff member and were investigating the matter. However, the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), the county teachers union, found issue with the schools sending community letters about the incident. MCEA urged MCPS officials in a letter to “cease and desist from issuing letters to school communities regarding personnel matters when an MCEA unit member is placed on administrative leave.”
The letter, which was sent to MCPS chief of district operations Dana Edwards, stated that the teachers at Takoma Park and Westland Middle Schools appeared “to be targeted based upon their viewpoint, which constitutes viewpoint discrimination and a clear violation of the employee’s First Amendment rights.” Additionally, the letter claimed that the community letters condemned the teachers’ actions prior to an investigation and the district’s actions violated employees’ due process rights.
Siegel said she disagreed with the union’s stance to protect the rights of members to maintain a private life outside of MCPS.
“It is not about maintaining a private life outside of MCPS,” she said. “This is about teachers taking actions that directly impact their ability to be effective teachers in the classroom and that directly impact the wellbeing of a group of students.”
The JCRC has also gathered more than 3,500 signatures from residents across the county in a petition in support of MCPS’s investigations and applauding the school system for its intervention and removal of teachers from the classroom.