A former elementary-school assistant principal has filed a lawsuit against her Virginia school board claiming that she was the victim of intense harassment and a hostile work environment for expressing concerns about her district's mandatory "anti-racism" training, leading her to suffer from severe anxiety and panic attacks, and ultimately forcing her to leave her job.

Emily Mais's lawsuit against the Albemarle County School Board was filed in circuit court last week, and was announced Monday by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the nonprofit conservative legal firm that is representing her.

In the lawsuit, Mais alleges that district leaders ignored her complaints about the training, during which staff members were taught divisive concepts about race, including that "Whiteness is characterized by a sense of entitlement," and that only members of the "dominant race" can commit acts of racism. She says an assistant superintendent instructed teachers that they were on the "anti-racism school bus," and that they needed to "own" the district's anti-racism policy. That same administrator later likened parents who expressed concerns about the district's anti-racism approach to "slave owners," according to the lawsuit.

Mais also alleges she was the victim of a monthslong campaign of slander, harassment, and humiliation by a teacher's aide and other staff members after she mistakenly used the term "colored people" instead of "persons of color" during one training session.

Phil Giaramita, an Albemarle schools spokesman, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying in an email that the board hasn't been formally served with the complaint. "We look forward to responding to these allegations in the appropriate legal forum in the future," he said.

Kate Anderson, senior counsel with ADF and director of the firm's Center for Parental Rights, accused the district of attempting to indoctrinate teachers and staff with a "harmful ideology."

"Instead of training faculty members to embrace students of all races, Albemarle County school officials are using a curriculum that promotes racial discrimination," Anderson said in a prepared statement. "The training sets up a classic Catch-22: It encourages all staff members to 'speak their truth,' but when a white person like Emily raises concerns about the divisive content, she is deemed a racist in need of further 'anti-racism' instruction."

Mais, a former elementary-school art teacher and school administrator, began working as an assistant principal at Agnor-Hurt Elementary School in the Charlottesville area in October 2018. Four months later, the district adopted an anti-racism policy, with the purpose of eliminating racism from the schools, using the framework of critical theory, the lawsuit states. In addition to the policy, the district's website includes an "Am I an Anti-Racist" explainer document, as well as an "anonymous alerts" system, where people can report instances of racism.

In November 2020, the district launched a mandatory online orientation presentation for all staff members to introduce the policy. "If I identify forms of racism, and I do absolutely nothing about it, then I become a practitioner of racism," Bernard Hairston, then-assistant superintendent for school community empowerment, said in a video statement. "Now, consider this controversial statement by some researchers: 'You are either a racist or an anti-racist.' It is time for you to think about how you will own this required anti-racism training and the policy."

In the video, Hairston also said that staff members need to think about whether they were on the "anti-racism school bus, or if you need help finding your seat and keeping your seat, or if it's time for you to just get off the bus," according to the lawsuit. Mais believed that meant staff members who didn't agree with the policy or its implementation would lose their jobs, the lawsuit states.

The following March, district staff members were required to attend a mandatory webinar on anti-racism, based on a curriculum from racial-equity consultant Glenn Singleton, author of the book Courageous Conversations About Race. The training urged staffers to move from a "colorblind" view of race to a "color conscious" view, and included materials that "stereotyped, demeaned, and dismissed white people as perpetrators of systemic racism," with stereotypical descriptions of white culture, according to the lawsuit. For example, the training taught that "white talk" is verbal, impersonal, intellectual, and task-oriented, whereas "color commentary" is nonverbal, personal, emotional, and process-oriented.

When white training participants, including Mais, attempted to "speak their truth," other participants "made hurtful, dismissive, and racially charged statements to or about white people with no intervention by or recourse from" district leaders. According to the lawsuit, Agnor-Hurt Elementary staffers began complaining to Mais about the "racially hostile environment created by the training," which "demonized them for being white." But district leaders repeatedly dismissed or ignored Mais's complaints, the lawsuit states.

That May, after some parents expressed concerns about the district's implementation of its anti-racism policy, Hairston, the assistant superintendent, addressed them behind closed doors during a mandatory administrators’ meeting the next day. According to the lawsuit, Hairston told the staff that his ancestors had been enslaved by a wealthy Virginia family, and that "he received the parents' comments as if they were slave owners who had raped his mother and sister, beaten him, and were now telling him not to talk about."

During her last training session in June 2021, during a discussion about the racial breakdown of the school district's staff and new hires, Mais inadvertently used the term "colored people" instead of "people of color," and "quickly apologized for her slip of the tongue," according to the lawsuit. A teacher's aide, identified in the lawsuit as Sheila Avery, "ignored the apology and verbally attacked Ms. Mais for her slip of the tongue during the training and in front of all attendees, accusing Ms. Mais of speaking like old racists who told people of color to go to the back of the bus," the lawsuit states. In the weeks after that training, several employees told Mais that Avery and her friends were openly calling her vulgar names at work, including "that white racists (expletive)" and "that two-faced racist (expletive)."

When reached on her cellphone Monday by National Review, Avery denied using those terms to describe Mais. Avery said "it wasn't a mistake" that Mais used the outdated term "colored." Avery acknowledged that Mais apologized to her during the meeting, but to fully atone, "the only thing she had to do was apologize to the whole staff," Avery said.

"The only thing that that everybody was looking for, especially all the black people, was just to say, 'I'm sorry,' But she didn't want to do that," Avery said. According to the lawsuit, Mais made multiple apologies.

As a result of the harassment, Mais struggled to sleep, broke out in hives, and suffered from panic attacks, headaches, and depression, among other physical manifestations. She resigned in late August, effective September 10. In an effort to leave the district on good terms, Mais agreed to make a public apology at a staff meeting on September 9 and to discuss the emotional toll the ordeal had taken on her. According to the lawsuit, Avery told her that "she should not discuss her feelings because no one cared about them," and a school guidance counselor told her that "by discussing her feelings and her hurt, she was inappropriately acting in a racist fashion like a typical defensive white person as outlined in the Courageous Conversations curriculum."

In addition to representing Mais, Alliance Defending Freedom also is representing a group of parents who are suing the Albemarle County School Board for enacting an anti-racism policy that they say is based on critical race theory, and that "requires students and teachers to view everything and everybody through the lens of race." The policy violates students' civil rights by treating them differently based on their race, the parents say, and by requiring them to affirm ideas that run in opposition to their moral and religious beliefs.

"Public schools should never promote race-based division among kids, but that is exactly what Albemarle County is doing," said Anderson with ADF. "The school board's so-called 'Anti-Racism' policy is in fact teaching children how to be racist – it mandates treating one another differently based on one's race."

THIS BREAKING NEWS ITEM IS PRESENTED BY

Former Administrator Sues School Board, Claims She Was Harassed for Criticizing 'Racially Hostile' CRT Trainings

Emily Mais sued the Albemarle County School Board, claiming she was made the victim of a 'hostile work ... READ MORE

A magisterial intellectual history of American conservatism

A sweeping account of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures. The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism.

Learn more