Former Ethnic Studies teacher Chloe Gentile-Montgomery, represented by Reed Williams Law, filed a lawsuit against the Sequoia Union High School District on April 30. Her complaint accuses the District of race and gender discrimination, hostility, retaliation, and failure to prevent harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.
One of the first incidents cited in the lawsuit is a mandatory 2023 District implicit bias training, done in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center. Many attendees felt the $275,000 Zoom presentation was unproductive and a waste of resources. This led to anonymous negative comments from some in the training’s Padlet—an online forum—which Gentile-Montgomery claims targeted Black individuals.
This section of the lawsuit includes excerpts of responses to questions posed during the training, but doesn’t include the specific prompts that contextualize those responses.
Many of Gentile-Montgomery’s claims about the District’s failure to prevent discrimination are centered in the aftermath of an M-A student’s arrest in 2023 and the all-staff meeting that followed.
The lawsuit outlines Gentile-Montgomery’s frustration with how the meeting was conducted. It also details her interruption of the meeting in which she expressed her “disgust” after Principal Karl Losekoot admitted that, if the situation occurred again, he would still call the police. Other staff members then became upset and began “cutting [her] off.”
In the aftermath of the meeting, several all-staff emails were sent by staff members, two of which the lawsuit cites. One teacher wrote, “We cannot work together with judgment and disdain. Yesterday, I saw people talking over each other. I heard snarky side comments. I saw people I love crying. I saw someone break out in actual hives from the stress. I saw people leave the meeting in an agitated state. This is not the way. In our attempt to end suffering, we create more suffering. We become that which we are fighting against. Aggression only breeds more aggression. We can do better.”
Another staff member wrote, “The question we should be asking ourselves is what would the students we serve think of our behavior. How do we as educators expect to lead by example when ‘WE’ can’t control our emotions?”
The lawsuit claims that these emails insinuated that, because of her race, Gentile-Montgomery was “aggressive” and “not in control of her emotions” during the meeting. It also alleges that the stress she experienced because of the meeting and these emails triggered her Lupus, an autoimmune disease. The lawsuit later characterizes the incident as Gentile-Montgomery being “publicly reprimanded and shamed by the entire staff for speaking her truth.”
Throughout the aftermath of the student’s arrest, the lawsuit continues to claim that the stress of certain situations triggered her autoimmune disease, occasionally forcing her to take time off from teaching.
The lawsuit also discusses Gentile-Montgomery’s involvement in the controversial lesson about the Israel-Palestine conflict in Ethnic Studies classes. The lawsuit says that after teachers presented the lesson to students, Losekoot told Gentile-Montgomery and another Ethnic Studies teacher to take the lesson down from Canvas and cease teaching it because it allegedly violated the District’s policy on teaching controversial issues.
Gentile-Montgomery was then called in to meet with Losekoot, who she claims “singled [her] out because she is a Black woman,” and also given that she was not the creator of the lesson. She also claims that throughout the aftermath of the controversy, she was met with hostility from an Administrative Vice Principal for her advocacy of Black students.
The lawsuit cites the publication of multiple M-A Chronicle articles regarding this incident as causing her “extreme anxiety” and “panic attacks,” leading to her asking Losekoot to intervene. However, the articles are protected from administrative censorship under California Education Code 48907.
She also claims the administration did not do enough to protect her from harassment. The lawsuit specifically mentions posters of Israeli hostages put up outside her classroom, anonymous emails, and the placement of a book titled “Woke Antisemitism” signed by a “concerned parent” in her office mailbox.
Following the controversy, Gentile-Mongomery decided to go on a leave of absence “because she did not feel safe at work and had faced harassment due to the lesson and SUHSD failure to protect her from harassment and discrimination.”
Following her return to school that February, Gentile-Montgomery was told she would be “non-reelected for the following school year” because she was “not a good fit.”
The lawsuit also alleges inappropriate behavior toward Gentile-Montgomery by a student who messaged her anonymously on Instagram in pursuit of a sexual relationship. Gentile-Montgomery immediately reported the incident to M-A administration, but claims “no mediation was facilitated” and “no repercussions for this student or protections [were] put in place.”
As a result of these incidents, Gentile-Montgomery claims to have “lost wages [and] benefits.” In addition to a possible monetary settlement, her demands—if met—would likely require the District to pass new policies aimed at preventing future discrimination.
All of her complaints were filed under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and California Government Code section 12940, which guarantee civil rights to employees, protect them from discrimination and harassment, and ensure they are adequately supported by their employer.
This lawsuit comes less than two weeks after former basketball coach and BSU advisor Mike Molieri announced he intends to take legal action against the District for alleged retaliation and discrimination.
Gentile-Montgomery’s complaint is now the sixth ongoing lawsuit that the District is facing, some of which also accuse the District of discrimination and harassment.
The M-A Chronicle reached out to both the District and Reed Williams Law for comment, but neither responded in time for the publication of this article.
