Minnesota school district punished pro-deportation teacher for 'disruption,’ lawsuit alleges

School districts often admonish teachers to be careful how they represent themselves on social media, especially by not identifying themselves with the district or posting during work hours, so as not to create headaches with parents and community members.

But what happens when the district itself adds fuel to a small controversy, then punishes a teacher who did everything right for the disruption the district caused?

Minnesota's Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools unconstitutionally suspended award-winning teacher Brooke Zahn without pay for her post in a private Facebook group, under her maiden name and from her home, which it obtained from progressive activists and then showed to families with children in her school and all district employees, Zahn's lawsuit says.

"It was not standard practice in the District or at Jeffers Pond Elementary to broadcast personnel matters to all staff or all families in this manner" and had never happened in Zahn's eight years teaching in the district, according to the suit, which seeks revocation of the district's "disciplinary directives" and actual and punitive damages.

"The District had no basis to punish Ms. Zahn, as her speech had no impact on her classroom and did not create a material disruption in the school," but it "caved to outside pressure" and punished her for the wrong viewpoint, her lawyers at the Upper Midwest Law Center said.

UMLC threatened to sue the district Feb. 10 unless it agreed by Feb. 28 to "immediately rescind all disciplinary actions" against Zahn, remove related information from her personnel file, reimburse her for the week-long suspension and "issue a formal public apology" everywhere it mentioned the incident and orally at the next regular school board meeting.

"No reasonable person could possibly believe this Meme is not speech on a matter of public concern," and thus constitutionally protected for public employees, or that it wasn't related to former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan’s widely viewed 60 Minutes interview the month before, UMLC said then.

UMLC didn't answer Just the News queries on why it took another six months to sue, but President Doug Seaton told the Minnesota nonprofit Sahan Journal the district declined its terms. He's confident Zahn would win because UMLC got a $30,000 settlement from another Minnesota district that let teachers put up Black Lives Matter posters in class.

The district told Just the News it does not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit reaffirms the Land of 10,000 Lakes' reputation as a hotbed of progressive speech policing for professions from medicine to education.

Last December, a federal appeals court reinstated a First Amendment retaliation lawsuit against a Minneapolis public hospital by Tara Gustilo, who was removed as OB-GYN department chair following her Facebook posts criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory and calling COVID-19 the "China virus" and racial justice protests "riots."

A state judge greenlit most claims against the nationally renowned Mayo Clinic by anesthesiology professor Michael Joyner for suspending and denying him future salary increases because he talked to the media about a disfavored COVID treatment and the inherent athletic advantage of males over females. A jury trial is scheduled for this month.

A federal judge allowed ex-professor Erica Lopez Prater's religious discrimination lawsuit against private Hamline University to proceed, for not renewing her contract after an opt-out art lesson offended some Muslim students, prompting a settlement a year ago.

From Bluesky to the superintendent and HR

Less than a year before the Zahn controversy, the Prior Lake VFW Post 6208 and Minnesota VFW 2nd District both named her their teacher of the year, according to her suit. 

Zahn went out of her way to not associate her since-deactiviated Facebook account with the district, identifying herself as "Brooke Bendorf" and disclosing in her "Intro" statement: "The views I share are mine & mine alone and only represent me."

She shared a meme Dec. 1, 2024, in the Prior Lake Light Hearted Conservative Group US, which still has fewer than 900 members who must be individually approved by Facebook group administrators, that reads "The family that is deported together stays together." 

It's a mashup of a family-deportation proposal by Homan and the saying "the family that prays together stays together," which is "well-known in conservative and religious circles as a commentary on the importance of family unity," the suit says.

The president-elect's pledge to appoint Homan as White House border czar "renewed discussion of whether immigration removals could or should" break up families with both legal and illegal status, and Zahn favored Homan's whole-family proposal.

She has no reason to believe any student in her class or their parents "ever objected" to the meme, which only drew "relatively widespread notice online" from others who are "for the most part" not even members of her school community.

It was shared Dec. 5 outside the private Facebook group Prior Lake Peeps by administrator Jeff Goldy and member Terri Cecil Schammel, both local progressive activists, a day before the Minnesota-based Troublemakers Alliance posted it on the little-seen progressive social media platform Bluesky, according to the suit.

Critics of Zahn's post identified her as a Prior Lake teacher and contacted the district to demand her punishment – 22 emails total the first week, "at least 3" nearly identical. 

On Dec. 6, her principal Patrick Glynn told a parental listserv about "concerns" about a social media post "allegedly connected to a staff member,” invited "questions or concerns" about the school climate, and told parents the district "dean and social worker" would "support any questions or concerns from students." 

He sent the same email to school staff, and Superintendent Michael Thomas notified all district staff of the controversy. The district's human rights officer also encouraged all district staff Dec. 6 to avail themselves of "Responding to Microaggressions" and "Understanding and Dealing with Racial Trauma" resources, the suit says.

"About" 20 more emails followed over the next two weeks, a mix of support for and criticism of Zahn, and on Dec. 9 district personnel met with a high school student advisory group to tell them about a post by a fourth-grade teacher. Two of those students spoke that night at a school board meeting about Zahn's post.

Only one person tied to Zahn's class, a student's mother, spoke to the district about her post, on Dec. 10, and said "her child did not know about it and that it had not affected the child’s classroom experience," the suit says, citing a public records request.

The district's broadcast of Zahn's post bore fruit for weeks on the Reddit subgroup for Minnesota, with posters calling for Zahn's firing, labeling her a "Nazi" who deserves punishment "far beyond a firing" and saying the school was "being destroyed right now by the M4L [Moms for Liberty], extreme right group."

Earlier punishment for criticizing COVID mask mandates

Five days after sharing Zahn's post widely, the district suspended her without pay for seven days, gave her what appeared to be vague directions on what she could say on social media and mandated "cultural competence and inclusion professional development training," threatening discipline "up to and including the immediate termination of your employment" if she didn't comply, the suit says.

It blamed her for causing "significant education disruption across the District" without acknowledging it shared her post far beyond the digital backwater Bluesky.

The Dec. 11 discipline letter claims Zahn violated "prior directives" from three years earlier, in the wake of her punishment for posting against "COVID-19-era masking requirements in schools," by engaging in "any conduct that is the same or similar to the described incident." The only similarity in the two incidents is the district disliked her posts, the suit says.

The U.S. and Minnesota constitutions prohibit government employers from giving "random online critics a 'heckler’s veto' over an employee's speech outside the workplace," use their disagreement to punish them, "itself generate a 'controversy'" as a pretext for punishment, or punish one viewpoint as disruptive while tolerating similarly disruptive others.

The district rejected Zahn's union grievance in January 2025, and she endured "lost time and dignitary harm" from the district "try[ing] to convince her to change her political views" in the training required by her discipline letter, according to the suit.

The anguish and distress from the district targeting her compelled Zahn to "remove herself from school committees and to eat lunch in her classroom, away from her peers and colleagues," feeling she is "one misstep away from termination."

She deleted her Facebook post, then deactivated her entire account. If she prevails over the district, Zahn plans to reactivate it "and resume posting about matters of public concern as they arise," the suit says.