For a post on her Facebook page, she was called a racist.
As reported by the Cook County Record:
A former Palatine High School teacher will be allowed to continue with her defamation lawsuit against a Palatine High School board member and Black Lives Matter activist, as she seeks a court order requiring the BLM protest organizer to pay for allegedly accusing her of racism, leading to her termination last summer.
On June 25, Cook County Judge Jerry Esrig rejected an attempt by defendant Tim McGowan to toss the lawsuit filed against him by Jeanne Hedgepeth….
Hedgepeth had filed suit against McGowan in Cook County Circuit Court in March, accusing him of smearing her reputation and of allegedly organizing a campaign to get her fired from the teaching job she had held in Township High School District 211 in northwest suburban Palatine for two decades.
Another example of illiberal liberals who want to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Outrageously, this firing comes from a unit of government, which, by extension, has denied the plaintiff her constitutional right of free speech.
Here’s what she said:
According to published reports, at the time of the protests, Hedgepeth allegedly posted a message to her personal Facebook page, responding to the BLM protests by saying, in part: “I find the term ‘white privilege’ as racist as the ‘N’ word. You have not walked in my shoes either so do not make assumptions about me and my so called privilege. You think America is racist? Then you have been hoodwinked by the white liberal establishment and race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.”
Might this case have national implications? The “racist” label is applied so often that it has become the new equivalent of the “commie” and “fellow traveler” charges cast against opponents of the far right in the 1950s. How ironic how the far left ridicules the 1950s when the far left is looking more and more like the far right.
The legal definition of defamation is:
Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person’s reputation; decreases the respect,regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings againsta person. Defamation may be a criminal or civil charge. It encompasses both written statements, known as libel, and spokenstatements, called slander.
Certainly, tossing your job because you are a “racist” definitely would qualify as defamation is you can’t prove that a person is one. What the plaintiff wrote here is not racist. It is a legitimate point of view protected by the first amendment.
I hope other targets of this false charge follow her example.
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Jeanne Hedgepeth, Palatine High Schooi, Tim McGowan, Township High School District 211
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