Judge resurrects white teacher's lawsuit against district for racial segregation, 'stigmatization'

Five years after a drama teacher sued her Chicago-area school district for racially segregating employees and students in the name of antiracism and promoting hostility against whites like herself – allegations upheld by the first Trump administration and ignored by its predecessor — the judge who tossed Stacy Deemar's first case has partially greenlit her second try.

The Supreme Court's 2023 ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, to which U.S. District Judge John Tharp paid lip service when he dismissed Deemar's initial complaint a year later, confirms that "the government can never classify based on race" under the anti-segregation precedent Brown, the President Obama nominee ruled Tuesday.

Evanston-Skokie School District 65, whose homepage displays the pioneering transgender prostitute Marsha Johnson and children holding racial justice signs, argued it was trying to "address the longstanding gaps and inequities" between racial groups by segregating staff meetings and excluding whites from "racial affinity group sessions."

SCOTUS rejected this "anti-subordination" reading of the 14th Amendment, which deems racial classifications "problematic only when they harm a socially disadvantaged group," Tharp's memorandum and order says.

Deemar may seek relief against the district solely for alleged past harm under the Equal Protection Clause, since her amended complaint doesn't suggest she "faces imminent harm in the future," the judge wrote, also excluding her Title VI racial discrimination claims because they implicate "District 65’s employment practices" under Title VII.

The teacher's lawyers at the Southeastern Legal Foundation celebrated the order for confirming that "any discrimination is too much." 

SLF President Kim Hermann said the Trump administration "paved the way" for Judge Tharp's ruling through its January 2021 findings letter against District 65, which said its segregated professional development trainings, "racially exclusive affinity groups" and race-based discipline policy violated Title VI.

The district claimed the newly inaugurated Biden administration suspended the proceedings in light of President Biden's executive orders on racial equity, but the second Trump administration resumed it when Deemar filed a new complaint through her lawyers a year ago.

Deemar alleged the district "continued its discriminatory policies and practices" after the Biden administration dismissed her complaint in 2024, the Trump administration's Department of Education said at the time.

The district's racial segregation was wide-ranging, from "privilege walks" to affinity groups that separated whites from "individuals of color," Deemar claimed. Its training seminars trafficked in "racial stereotypes" about how whites are "loud" and "controlling" and nonwhites practice "silent respect," and children as young as four were trained to be "actively anti-racist."

One of the most memorable allegations concerned a book that teachers from prekindergarten through fifth grade were required to read and discuss with students, displaying "a white man with a devil’s tail holding a 'whiteness' contract" that grants whites the right to "mess endlessly" with the lives of nonwhites "for the purpose of profit."

"After four long years of the Biden Administration’s tolerance for this kind of conduct, the American people returned President Trump to office to end this madness and enforce Title VI," then-acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said. 

The Department of Education didn't answer a query for an update on that investigation, now 14 months old.

'Ordinary features of workplace training' deemed unconstitutional

Deemar's case is now further along than another by SLF also challenging school district antiracism training, which has made two trips to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel overruled a Democrat-turned-judge who slapped SLF's teacher-clients Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley with a $313,000 penalty for suing their Missouri district. The full 8th Circuit voted 6-5 to reinstate the case in December 2025, though it notably refused to censure the Obama nominee who penalized the teachers.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Harpool, a five-time Missouri House Democrat, paused the case in April pending Springfield Public Schools' forthcoming petition to the Supreme Court, which was initially due June 1 but which Justice Brett Kavanaugh extended to July 30.

"This case raises an exceptionally important First Amendment question: whether a public employer compels or chills employee speech by requiring employees to attend mandatory workplace training and complete related training exercises," the district's May 14 application for a time extension said.

The full 8th Circuit "treats ordinary features of workplace training – mandatory attendance, participation rules, discussion prompts, knowledge checks with credited answers, and completion requirements – as First Amendment injuries whenever employees object to the training’s content or are not permitted to dissent during the training itself," it said.

An un-tenured professor dumped by Indiana University for promoting similar antiracism messages to her students, which allegedly violated an Indiana law on peddling political views to students unrelated to the course, is gearing up to sue the institution with legal representation funded by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The public university suspended instructor Jessica Adams after a student complained to Indiana GOP Sen. Jim Banks about a pyramid shown in her graduate course, identifying the phrase "Make America Great Again" as covert white supremacy and implying it was "worse than police killing people of color." Her contract was not renewed.

'Intense stigmatization of white people' is legal injury

Judge Tharp, who took over Deemar's case from a retiring colleague in 2022, suggested the drama teacher's amended complaint just barely crossed the threshold to keep going, rather than ponder whether his dismissal of her initial complaint was too hasty. 

Many of her alleged facts are "identical" in the new complaint, including that District 65 promoted racial discrimination through an "equity" focus, subjected teachers in segregated reading groups to the work of "white fragility" popularizer Robin DiAngelo and ordered her to teach students hostility toward whites for Black Lives Matter-themed weeks.

But the judge noted he had already concluded the district's treatment of race could "contribute to an overall racially hostile environment" for Deemar.

Her new complaint first alleges Deemar herself was treated differently for her race, Tharp claimed, citing her segregation into whites-only staff meetings, her exclusion from professional development training available to Asian, black, indigenous and "LatinX" staff and the district tolerating "race-based insults and accusations" against her by students.

The district's "racial stereotyping and animus, the stigma against her because of her race, the aggressive and racist philosophy being promoted, and the racial segregation present in many events" together convinced Deemar she couldn't pursue professional development in District 65, so she instead enrolled in a Northeastern University program.

Deemar's fleshed-out allegations, "if true, establish that she suffered a past harm," including "intense stigmatization of white people like her," Tharp said. These are "concrete and particularized" enough for her to get the nominal damages she seeks.

District 65 is wrong that Deemar falls outside the "zone of interests" protected by Title VI, incorrectly claiming she must be an "intended beneficiary" of the educational benefits paid for by federal funding, Tharp said, but he agreed with the district that Deemar is in fact complaining about employment practices, which are specifically excluded from Title VI.