Oregon woman fired over Ruby Bridges civil rights shirt wins $250,000 settlement – oregonlive.com:
The Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by Beth Schmidt, who was fired as the agency’s Safe Routes to School coordinator for wearing a T-shirt bearing an image of one of America’s most celebrated civil rights paintings.
The settlement came three months after a federal judge issued a stinging rebuke of the council’s position. In July, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken emphatically rejected the council’s motion to dismiss Schmidt’s lawsuit and ruled that its executive director was not entitled to qualified immunity.
The council is a public consortium of cities and counties throughout Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties.
Schmidt’s shirt portrayed Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1964 painting, “The Problem We All Live With.” It depicts 6-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted by four federal marshals to a New Orleans school. The shirt includes in the background, as does the original painting, graffiti of a racist slur, reflecting the racism Bridges confronted at the time. In 1960, Bridges became the first Black child to attend William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans, after a federal court ordered the city’s school system to integrate.
Schmidt wore the shirt to work on Nov. 12, 2023, and a week later, the council’s then-interim executive director, McRae Carmichael, gave her a letter informing her that the shirt violated the council’s policy on “prohibited harassment,” Schmidt’s lawsuit said. Schmidt said she was told that her job was not in jeopardy and was directed not to wear the shirt to work again, as it could “potentially create a hostile work environment.” She never wore it to work again.
Yet three days later, on Nov. 17, 2023, she was fired. Carmichael told her that three people had complained about the shirt.
In court filings, the council’s lawyer Roman Hernandez argued that the district’s “interest in reducing disruption” to its “working environment” outweighed Schmidt’s free speech rights, and that the shirt violated the council’s policies on “prohibited harassment.”
Lesson One: The First Amendment trumps whatever stupid policy this council put together. Even if one disagreed with the message—which seems hard to believe, but let’s go there—there is little chance that this t-shirt is disruptive or evidence of harassment. Indeed, Schmidt’s was a perfectly reasonable assumption that no one in their right mind would find her shirt offensive.
Which brings us to Lesson Two: The people running the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments don’t belong within 10 city blocks of any kind of power. They should be fired or removed.