A California teacher who was suspended for posting on her private Facebook page that Charlie Kirk was a “propaganda-spewing racist misogynist” who “got what he deserved” a day after the right-wing activist was assassinated has filed a federal lawsuit charging the Los Angeles-area school district and board of trustees with violating her free speech rights.
Rachel McKagan, who has taught English in the Las Virgenes Unified School District for over a decade, alleges in the lawsuit that school officials endangered her by “massively amplifying” a post that she herself deleted at the urging of a school principal four hours after it was posted.
McKagan said in the lawsuit that she was warned by a district official that there would be a “media frenzy” before the district posted a statement condemning her remarks as “vile and completely inappropriate,” adding that the district was moving to fire her.
While the statement did not name McKagan, she said that she was unmasked online almost immediately and subjected to threats, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in the United States District Court, Central District of California.
On Sept. 14, four days after Kirk was killed, McKagan said she received a screenshot of a text exchange between the school’s board of trustees president, Dallas Lawrence, and a local MAGA activist saying that “all five trustees” wanted to fire her and that the board “was ‘meeting’ about the matter,” according to the lawsuit.
“No agenda or notice of any such meeting was ever posted publicly” as required by law, the lawsuit states.
Now McKagan, who was allowed to return to teaching English and ESL classes on Nov. 10, is suing for unspecified damages. The lawsuit names as defendants the LVUSD, schools superintendent Daniel Stepenosky, Lawrence, four additional board trustees and 50 other individuals identified as John Does.
McKagan’s lawyer, David Ratner, said in an email that his client was notified on Nov. 7 that she could return to work, “which she was happy to do.”
“Both her coworkers and her students received her enthusiastically and were glad that she was back teaching,” Ratner said in an email. “She hasn’t received any threats recently. She does not regret posting her opinion about Mr. Kirk on Facebook.”
However, Ratner said, “she is distressed that the school board, its president, and the school superintendent exhibited such disregard for her First Amendment rights for their own political purposes.”
“It seems to me that the school board sent the wrong message to its community by publicly attacking Ms. McKagan,” Ratner wrote. “I think that the right to express one’s opinions, whether popular or not, is so fundamental to our democracy.”
NBC News has reached out to the district, Stepenosky and Lawrence for comment.
For over a decade, McKagan has taught English as a second language at the Mariposa Waldorf school, a K-through-12 school in Agoura Hills.
In the lawsuit, McKagan said she was in a training session the day Kirk was gunned down at a Utah college and the next day she “posted a message on her personal Facebook account, which she believed was visible only to her friends,” saying that Kirk “got what he deserved.”
That evening, according to the lawsuit, McKagan’s school principal called her and said a district administrator had notified her about the Kirk post.
“Plaintiff immediately took down the post and adjusted her privacy settings,” the suit states. “At this point, the post had been visible for approximately four hours.”
Two days later, McKagan said she was suspended. The same day, the district posted a statement condemning her Kirk post.
“It violates Board policy, and is deeply offensive to the Board of Education,” the statement said, according to the lawsuit. “It is never appropriate for any LVUSD employee to justify violence. The employee has been placed on an immediate leave while the District engages in the legally required investigation and procedures to move forward with termination.”
Lawrence and the other board members reposted the statement on their personal Instagram and Facebook accounts and on the LVUSD Parent Community Facebook Groups, the suit states.
The board president also encouraged people “to share it with others,” according to the lawsuit.
“City council members from the City of Calabasas, which is located within LVUSD’s territory, also reposted the statement, further expanding its reach,” the lawsuit states.
“Although the statement did not name Plaintiff, the statement was clearly about and concerning Plaintiff,” the suit states. “Following LVUSD’s public statement, community members in Facebook threads quickly identified Mariposa Waldorf as Plaintiff’s school and identified Plaintiff by name.”
Soon, screenshots of McKagan’s deleted Kirk post and her photograph were circulating online and the local newspaper named her in a story.
McKagan said in the lawsuit that after a threatening call from an anonymous person, she stayed home with her husband and tried to scrub their online presence. She said she asked her union rep to appeal to the school district to remove any “identifying information and protect her safety.”
But, McKagan claimed in the lawsuit, “LVUSD refused to do so.”
The district did not file formal charges against McKagan or hold a hearing. McKagan was allowed to return to work after her lawyer interceded on her behalf, according to the lawsuit.
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