Thompson v. Board of Educ. of the City of Chicago, 88 C 7637.

• Decision Date: 21 March 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88 C 7637.,88 C 7637.
• Citation: 711 F. Supp. 394
• Parties: Kay THOMPSON, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO, a body politic and corporate, Manford Byrd, Jr., General Superintendent of Schools, in his individual and official capacity, and Norman Silber, District Superintendent of District 31, in his individual and official capacity, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

711 F. Supp. 394

Kay THOMPSON, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO, a body politic and corporate, Manford Byrd, Jr., General Superintendent of Schools, in his individual and official capacity, and Norman Silber, District Superintendent of District 31, in his individual and official capacity, Defendants.

No. 88 C 7637.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

March 21, 1989.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Harvey Grossman, Jane M. Whicher, The Roger Baldwin Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union, Inc., Elpidio R. Villarreal, Theodore J. May, Marjorie S. Jacobson, Sonnenschein Carlin Nath & Rosenthal, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.

Patricia J. Whitten, Atty., Karen Gatsis Anderson, Edward J. Santiago, Miguel Angel Rodriquez, Board of Educ. of the City of Chicago, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

ALESIA, District Judge.

The plaintiff, Kay Thompson ("Thompson"), has brought this action against the defendants, the Board of Education of the City of Chicago ("the Board"), Manford Byrd, Jr. ("Byrd"), and Norman Silber ("Silber"), pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In her complaint, as amended, Thompson, a Chicago public school teacher and librarian, alleges that the defendants, while acting under color of state law, violated her right of free speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by transferring her to another school and by denying her "selected status" in retaliation for making remarks which were published in an article appearing in a weekly Chicago newspaper. As a result, Thompson seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as damages.

On September 2, 1988, just prior to the opening of the new school year, Thompson applied to this Court for an order temporarily restraining and enjoining the defendants from transferring her to Carl Schurz High School, another Chicago public school, pending a hearing on, and resolution of, her motion for a preliminary injunction. After hearing arguments of counsel, this Court granted Thompson's request and issued a temporary restraining order precluding the defendants from transferring Thompson. By agreement of the parties, the terms of the temporary restraining order have remained in effect to date.

This matter now comes before the Court for a final disposition on the merits following a five-day bench trial.¹ After hearing testimony, examining the credible evidence of record, and reviewing the applicable law, we issue Thompson a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction. We also award her $15,000.00 in compensatory damages against defendant Board and $15,000.00 in compensatory damages against defendant Byrd, in his official capacity only. We set forth the facts as we find them to be and outline our reasons below.

I. FACTS

Thompson is a teacher and librarian at Roberto Clemente Academy High School ("Clemente"), a public high school operated by the Board. Thompson has been employed by the Board as a librarian at Clemente since 1974, the school's first year of operation. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in History from Roosevelt University, a Master's Degree in Library Science from Rosary College, and a Master's Degree in Guidance and Counseling from Northeastern Illinois University. During her thirteen years at Clemente, Thompson has consistently received a "superior" rating, the highest rating available, on her employment evaluations. She has never been the subject of any administrative disciplinary proceeding.

The Board is a body politic and corporate charged by statute with operating the public schools of the City of Chicago. Byrd is the General Superintendent of the Chicago public schools. In that capacity, Byrd makes the final decisions regarding personnel matters in all of the schools operated by the Board, subject to Board approval. Byrd's actions constitute the official practices and policies of the Board. Silber is the Superintendent of District 31, an administrative division of the Board. Clemente is located within the boundaries of District 31. As Superintendent of District 31, Silber has authority over personnel decisions within the district, subject to Byrd's approval. In this case, Thompson challenges two of the personnel decisions made by the defendants: the decision to involuntarily transfer her to Carl Schurz High School and the decision to deny her "selected status" at Clemente.

Decision to Transfer Thompson

In October, 1987, in the wake of a Chicago teachers' strike, Elizabeth Blanchard, a journalist, contacted Thompson and two of her fellow teachers. Blanchard requested an interview with the three teachers in order to obtain their perspective on teaching conditions and the quality of education in an inner-city high school.² Thompson and her two fellow teachers consented to an interview and met with Blanchard on two subsequent occasions. The first interview occurred at Blanchard's home in Evanston. During that interview, the teachers discussed a variety of topics, including lack of administrative and Board support, lack of parental involvement at Clemente, low reading levels, high drop-out rates, and numerous other social problems perceived by them to affect student education within the Clemente community. The second interview occurred approximately three weeks later, after school had adjourned for the day, in Clemente's library. During this second interview, the teachers concentrated on the positive aspects of teaching and some of the success stories that had emanated from Clemente. Blanchard conducted both interviews in the form of an informal question and answer session.

After these interviews occurred, but before Blanchard submitted her finished product for publication, Blanchard showed Thompson a draft of the article she intended to submit. Thompson reviewed the draft, expressing her disappointment to Blanchard over the format and content of the draft. Specifically, Thompson noted that the draft did not appear in traditional article format, but, rather, read like a transcript. Additionally, Thompson pointed out that the draft painted a rather lopsided portrait of the matters addressed by the teachers because it omitted many of the success stories and positive aspects of teaching discussed by the three teachers during their second interview with Blanchard. Although Blanchard listened to Thompson's comments on the draft, Blanchard did not afford Thompson the opportunity to modify the draft.

Edited portions of the teachers' interviews appeared in the January 22, 1988 issue of the Reader, a weekly Chicago newspaper, under the caption "What's It Like To Teach In An Inner-City High School? Listen In: Three Teachers Talking" ("the Reader article"). The Reader article summarized the comments of the teachers, including Thompson, on a variety of topics related to the general conditions in the Chicago public schools and the conditions at one particular high school in a largely Hispanic area. The topics covered in the Reader article included teacher "burnout," lack of administrative and Board support, teen pregnancy, AIDS, gangs, high drop-out rates, low reading levels, lack of parental support and involvement, shortcomings of the bilingual program, incest, drugs, student attitudes, and other social problems perceived within the community. The article also briefly mentioned a few of the "success stories" and some of the positive aspects of teaching.

When it was published, the Reader article did not identify any of the three teachers by name, nor did it identify Clemente as the high school at which they taught. Instead, the Reader article described the positions held by each of the three teachers and assigned each of them a pseudonym. Thompson's pseudonym was "Meg," who was described as a 50-year old librarian.

Despite the use of this pseudonym, shortly after publication and distribution of the Reader article, certain individuals either affiliated with Clemente or residing in the surrounding community surmised that Thompson was "Meg" and that the high school described in the article was Clemente. As circulation of the article increased, certain comments made by the three teachers in the Reader article aroused the wrath of a small, but very vocal, band of individuals within the community. This small band of individuals expressed their outrage over certain comments in the article which they perceived to be insulting and offensive to the Hispanic community. Nevertheless, other members of the Clemente faculty and the Clemente community expressed their unequivocal support for Thompson.

During the next two months, in March and April of 1988, at least two faculty meetings and three community meetings were held, at which the contents of the Reader article were discussed. During the two faculty meetings, those teachers present expressed divergent views about the Reader article. Some teachers expressed support for Thompson and her fellow teachers; others did not. Those who did not consisted primarily of a handful of teachers assigned to the Clemente bilingual education program, which had been the subject of some critical remarks in the Reader article.

Prior to the faculty meetings, this small group of teachers who took offense at the remarks in the Reader article had formed an organization they dubbed the "Ad Hoc Committee of Concerned Clemente Teachers." Some of the teachers who comprised this ad hoc committee also actively participated in the three community meetings at which the Reader article was discussed. They circulated copies of the Reader article within the Clemente community and recruited community members to attend the meetings and to launch a campaign to demand removal of the three teachers.

All three of the community meetings were led by Mirta Ramirez, the vice-president and acting president of the Clemente local school improvement council, an advisory body. Two of the three community meetings were previously scheduled hearings on the...