What happened
The Seventh Circuit on Wednesday revived a Wisconsin education administrator's First Amendment claim that she was demoted for refusing to embrace an equity mindset, while affirming summary judgment against her race discrimination and retaliation theories under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause.
Becky Spengler, a former Integration Director for Cooperative Educational Service Agency 7, alleged that CESA 7 and Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction officials pushed coaches to adopt an equity mindset requiring them to examine race, privilege and bias, and that she lost her role after objecting to what she viewed as a discriminatory philosophy toward white people.
Judge Michael Y. Scudder, writing for the panel, said Spengler could not show that race caused the job action. The opinion noted that she acknowledged the defendants likely would have removed an employee of color from the same role if that employee also refused to agree with DPI on matters of race, and it found no evidence that her race was a but-for cause or motivating factor in the demotion.
That same reasoning doomed her Title VII retaliation claim, the panel said, because she had no objectively reasonable basis to believe the defendants discriminated against her because of race. The court also said the equity-mindset materials in the record applied to coaches of all races and did not require Spengler to believe that all white people are naturally racist.
But the court split from the district judge on Spengler's First Amendment theory. The panel said a public employee may bring a claim alleging retaliation based on what she believes or refuses to believe, and that Spengler's operative complaint gave CESA 7 fair notice that she was pursuing that theory. The panel wrote that CESA 7 had fair notice of the claim and that "Rule 8(a) required no more."
The ruling sends the case back for further consideration of whether CESA 7 violated the First Amendment by retaliating against Spengler because of what she believes and what she declines to believe, leaving the merits of that theory for the district court on remand.