A suburban Chicago school district was within its rights to fire a teacher who posted inflammatory Facebook messages in the wake of protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, a federal appellate panel found Tuesday.
The posts from then-Palatine High School teacher Jeanne Hedgepeth drew a flood of complaints and put a disruptive media spotlight on the school district, wrote Judge Nancy Maldonado of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which found the district’s actions didn’t violate Hedgepeth’s free-speech rights.
“That evidence shows that Hedgepeth did not lose her job because she expressed ...