The 14th Amendment and its equal protection clause are playing out in a Maryland case in which a teacher is suing his former school district—Prince George’s County Public Schools—for giving him an unfair negative evaluation after he reported a school security guard he claims was shaking down special ed students for money, Courthouse News Service reports.
The complaint, filed in federal court, states that Parris Easley, a biology and special education teacher at Duval High School, told the school’s assistant principal that the security guard, Ulysses Lee, was demanding money from special education students, threatening to turn them in for gambling if they didn’t pay up.
In November 2010, one student Lee so falsely accused was expelled and turned over to the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services.
In a second incident, Easley claims he saw Lee physically harm a student who also told him about what Lee was doing. That student was also expelled, and Easley was scolded for reporting Lee’s behavior. The school’s principal also gave Easley a negative evaluation for the first time in 16 years of teaching.
The following school year, in May 2012, the principal at the school was allegedly caught on the school’s security cameras assaulting a special ed student assigned to Easley. That student was suspended, and Easley got his second negative evaluation thereafter. He was fired right after that.
Easley claims he was denied due process and equal protection and is suing the school district for $1 million based on retaliation and embarrassment, humiliation, stress, anxiety, and inconvenience.
