Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Teacher's appeal rejected
Loses retaliation suit, but wins new contract
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Social studies teacher Ralph Adams lost his appeal Tuesday against what he said was illegal retaliation for protesting clergy-led graduation prayers at Felicity-Franklin High School.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati took the unusual step of reading its unanimous, prepared decision immediately after oral arguments.
Typically, a ruling takes months to craft and issue.
In it, the three-judge panel affirmed the 1997 verdict by U.S. District Judge Herman J. Weber, who said Superintendent Roger Hornsby and the school board disciplined Mr. Adams for breaking school rules.
Judge Weber said Mr. Adams failed to prove he was a victim of retaliation for a constitutionally protected protest against public policy and tradition in the Clermont County school.
Still, clergy-led graduation prayer was discontinued and Mr. Adams salvaged his career; Monday, the board gave Mr. Adams a continuing contract, granting him protections that come with tenure.
“It's amazing,” said Scott Greenwood, the teacher's American Civil Liberties Union attorney. “He won the war but lost the battle.” Further appeals are “unlikely,” Mr. Greenwood said.
The conflict began when Mr. Adams told Mr. Hornsby that clergy-led prayer planned for the 1993 graduation violated U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Retaliation was swift, Mr. Adams said, and included:
• Phony dress code violations and one-year contract renewals instead of the traditional five years.
• Barring Mr. Adams from teaching about U.S. Supreme Court decisions that his bosses did not understand or like.
• A reprimand for views Mr. Hornsby considered anti-religious and criticism in an annual performance review of Mr. Adams' First Amendment activities.
School attorney Mr. Winters denied retaliation, saying Mr. Adams engaged in “several acts of civil disobedience designed to disrupt the educational process and to ridicule Hornsby and the board in his classes and before the students and staff.” He said those acts included:
• Mr. Adams' arriving at the 1993 spring sports banquet unshaven, dressed improperly and wearing no socks, in violation of dress standards.
• The next day, an unshaven, sock-less Mr. Adams wore a Hawaiian shirt to class, violating the dress code. Mr. Adams said he would break school laws because the district violated U.S. Supreme Court rulings on school prayer. Mr. Hornsby sent him home to dress properly, docked his pay, and issued a written reprimand.
• Mr. Adams' trimming his mustache into a postage-stamp “Hitler” mustache “for the purpose of embarrassing and ridiculing the superintendent and board members as Nazis in the presence of students and other staff.”
Quilt talk leaves women in stitches
Tristate educators: No school is completely safe
Ohio legislators pass tougher school crime bill
County delays transracial adoptions, suit says
Eye implant provides new vision
Private fund drive to restore fountain
Burglary suspect dies in wreck
Bauer to enter presidential race
Ch. 5's Norma Rashid fined for DUI
Northside pellet shootings adding up
PLAN for disabled adults
Networks weighing shows on the edge
GET TO IT
Problems at proms preventable
Building of playland postponed
Butler on defensive over bid law
Death rate for lung cancer above average in Tristate
Dickens back in Waynesville
Doan again denies slaying
Farmers' market in Lebanon proposed
Fen-phen's makers sued over death of woman, 40
Fiscal court sets vote for creation museum
Former UK football player gets 10 years for DUI deaths
Ind. man indicted in 10 church fires
Lockland residents back chief
Middletown agonizes over lack of sirens
Older state suburbs want Ohio to stop promoting urban sprawl
Renovations at Waynesville school to begin
Students plant nature park on Fernald site
Teacher's appeal rejected
Teens hear peers on alcohol
TRISTATE DIGEST R
Tristate schools win national honor
Urban Center takes shape
Ventura not singled out, judge rules
Voters will see a lot of mayoral issue
