4 fired Sewickley Academy teachers file lawsuit against school
SEWICKLEY, Pa. (KDKA) — A lawsuit against Sewickley Academy is alleging four teachers were fired from their roles for opposing racial discrimination during a purge of administrators.
The four teachers filed the federal lawsuit on Tuesday. The attorney for all four teachers, Samuel Cordes, said his clients confronted the school after firing its entire African American administration.
In exchange for standing up for what is right, Cordes said they paid the ultimate price: losing their jobs.
In the new lawsuit, Cordes said the teachers supported former Head of Admission Douglas Leek, who filed a separate lawsuit, after he was fired and replaced with a white woman. The school said it let him go due to declining enrollment and performance.
The lawsuits are fallouts of Critical Race Theory where teachers said the school tried to get them to forget the past and teach both sides of slavery after a group of parents complained.
However, in a letter to the four teachers a day after they were fired, the school said it let them go because they were uncooperative, unprofessional and contentious.
"You can't retaliate against someone for opposing discrimination, that's made illegal," Cordes said. "That a federal law. And this federal law has been in effect since 1866 not 1966, 1866."
The four teachers are asking for their jobs back and compensation for lost wages.
The school's statement can be found below.
"Sewickley Academy strongly disagrees with the claims made in the lawsuit. We cannot comment further about pending litigation."
