Texas Third Court of Appeals: ISD employees don’t lose their state-law-guaranteed employment rights by working in ISD/charter partnership campuses.
Fifth Circuit: A rejected applicant for an ISD school resource officer position waited too late to claim he was illegally retaliated against for previously filing a grievance against the district.
Ruling: An Hispanic-American ex-ISD teacher’s racial discrimination claim against his former district fails because he couldn’t show that he was treated less favorably than a similarly situated employee outside his protected class under nearly identical circumstances.
Ruling: Prior judicial rulings dismissing a former school bus driver’s discrimination lawsuit are affirmed.
Ruling: A former ISD police officer couldn’t show he was illegally fired for a Facebook “prayer” he posted.
Ruling: A judge should have dismissed a discrimination/wrongful termination lawsuit a fired charter teacher filed against the charter and up to 25 unnamed co-defendants.
Ruling: Although an ex-ISD employee can continue litigating his claim that he was improperly denied extra “premium pay” for working in-person during the COVID pandemic, his various other claims are dismissed.
Appeals Court: A jury — not a judge — may have to decide the outcome of the religious discrimination/retaliation lawsuit an ex-Harmony charter employee filed against the charter.
Fifth Circuit: A teacher can continue pursuing a portion of her federal lawsuit claiming her principal violated her rights in banning staff from participating in a before-school prayer event because students might be present.
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals: An ISD is not federally liable over claims that district personnel did not do enough to stop an elementary student from sexually harassing another student.
Ruling: An ISD’s board violated state education law by not holding a hearing on an ex-employee’s grievance.
Fifth Circuit: Ex-special-ed administrator lacks constitutional protections against being retaliated against for reporting, to his principal, that teachers had mistreated special-ed students, and for cooperating with a CPS investigation.
Ruling: An ISD can’t block an ex-administrator’s lawsuit against the district from moving forward at the trial court level.
Accused teacher who helped leak confidential info about his student accuser loses education commissioner appeal.
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of AppealsRuling: A charter district properly fired an employee — who…
Appeals Court: A judge should have dismissed an age discrimination lawsuit filed by a former ISD assistant transportation director.
Ruling: Although an ISD failed to show that its human resource’s director committed fraud, the…
Fifth Circuit: A federal judge properly dismissed a former substitute’s teacher’s claims that her firing was in retaliation for her discussing — with various district officials — her suspicions that federal funds were the subject of fraud or theft.
Ruling: An education commissioner’s decision — siding with an ISD over an administrator’s probationary contract termination challenge — should not have been overturned by a judge.
Ex-Houston ISD teacher who got a $28,360.44 settlement check for resigning now owes the district $20,869.35.
Ruling: An ISD’s board properly voided its chief financial officer’s employment contract because the contract…
Ruling: An ISD properly nonrenewed a teacher’s contract over his reported admission that he had…
Texas Thirteenth Court of Appeals (Corpus Christi-Edinburg)
Ruling: An ISD and school board member have sovereign immunity from being sued over an ex-administrator’s claims that she lost her job in retaliation for not placing the trustee’s daughter on the dean’s list.
Requested Opinion: RQ-0614-KP This request for an attorney general’s opinion — asked by Harris County…
Ruling: An ISD has legal immunity from being federally sued by the children of a teaching assistant who reportedly died from injuries sustained from being physically assaulted in her classroom by a special-ed student.
The Texas Supreme Court announced today that it would not consider Elijah Granger’s appeal of his voided $2,036,567.07 severance agreement with Lancaster ISD.
Texas Fifth Court of Appeals: A former special education director’s nonrenewal is upheld because she couldn’t show that the employment contract she “accepted” actually existed — and because she didn’t appeal her nonrenewal to the education commissioner before suing the district.
KISD’s decision to rehire a teacher despite his troubled past allowed the teacher to sexually molest a student — and justifies a jury’s $250,000 damage award against the district.
Ruling: A principal has (thus far) failed to show that she has legal immunity against parental claims that she failed to protect their five-year-old daughter from being repeatedly sexually molested at school by a substitute teacher.
An ISD justifiably fired an elementary principal for not immediately and adequately investigating an alleged incident at her school — and for taking too long (five days) to report the alleged incident to district higher-ups.
Ruling: An independent hearing examiner did nothing wrong by holding a scheduled due process hearing…
Ruling: An ISD board’s firing of its superintendent was justified due to evidence that she…
How ISDs and charters are to implement the state-funded school staffing pay allotments required by…
U.S. Fifth Circuit: An ISD has legal immunity from being sued by the children of a teaching assistant who reportedly died from injuries sustained from being physically assaulted in her classroom by a special-ed student.
Texas Third Court of Appeals: ISD employees don’t lose their state-law-guaranteed employment rights by working in ISD/charter partnership campuses.
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rules in a disabled Aldine ISD employee’s lawsuit over her service dog.
Texas Thirteenth Court of Appeals (Corpus Christi-Edinburg)
Ruling: Despite winning $212,300 jury verdict, a former ISD truancy officer failed to show that his firing was a retaliatory act that violated the state Whistleblower Act.
A now-former ISD child nutrition director couldn’t show she was retaliated against by being fired four years after she reported her suspicions that the district’s chief financial officer — who was later fired and then elected to the ISD’s board and became its president — had improperly transferred child nutrition funds for other uses by the district.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today his goal of “protecting women’s sports” has resulted…
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today he has requested an extensive list of documents from…
Ruling: A superintendent’s “disruptive relationships” — that resulted in the district spending more than $1.3…
Ruling: The commissioner lacks the legal authority to consider employment termination appeals arising from charter…
Texas Second Court of Appeals — A lawsuit claiming that a high school student’s “terroristic threats” against a teacher caused her to have an emotional and mental breakdown to the point where she had to take medical leave — and never again return to work — was properly dismissed by the trial judge.
Ruling: The education commissioner lacks the legal authority to overturn the termination of an “at-will”…
Adopted TEA rule: Mental health training for school personnel.
Ruling: An ISD did not have to follow the steps required under its reduction in force (RIF) policy when nonrenewing the term contract of a grant-funded administrator when the grant funding the position ran out.
Ruling: An ISD employee who was fired after contesting his “surprise” demotion from dean of students to truant officer failed to show that his firing resulted from employment discrimination.
The most pressing issues reported by thousands of Texas school nurses in a state-conducted survey…
Special-ed, DAEP/safe schools, employee mental health training.
Ruling: The education commissioner can’t overturn a school board decision to void an employment contract…
Ruling: A federal judge acted too hastily in dismissing an age discrimination lawsuit a former ISD administrator filed against the district.
Ruling: A teacher waited too long to challenge the termination of her probationary contract 22 years ago.
A charter school has legal immunity over being sued by a teacher who was fired on a finding that he had used excessive force against a student with a disability while trying to break up a fight between that student and another student.
Ruling: A teacher failed to show that his ISD discriminated against him by firing him when he refused to return to in-person teaching after schools that had closed (due to COVID) reopened.
Results of the Texas American Federation of Teachers (Texas AFT) member-only annual survey released Tuesday…
Ruling: A former ISD athletic coach skipped the procedural steps required to ensure that the…
Harris County media reported that a judge in Houston set a $100,000 bond this morning…
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