Jones-Redmond v. Thornton Fractional Township H.S. Dist. 215

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

SOPHIA JONES-REDMOND, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

)

)

v. ) No. 1:23-cv-5010

)

)

THORNTON FRACTIONAL TOWNSHIP )

H.S. DIST. 215, RICHARD DUST, )

in his individual capacity, )

PATRICIA STEPP, in her )

individual capacity, ANDREA )

BALLARD, in her individual )

capacity, DOMINIQUE NEWMAN, in )

her individual capacity, )

JACQUELINE TERRAZAS, in her )

individual capacity, MARCIE )

WILSON, in her individual )

capacity, )

)

Defendants. )

Memorandum Opinion and Order

Plaintiff Sophia Jones-Redmond sues her former employer,

Thornton Fractional Township High School District 215 (the

“District”), and the president and other individual members of

its Board of Education, claiming that they terminated her without

due process, and that the president of the Board, defendant Dust,

tortiously interfered with her employment contract. A summary of

events giving rise to plaintiff’s claims is as follows:

Plaintiff was employed as Superintendent of the District

under a contract running from July 1, 2021, through June 30,

2026. Plaintiff alleges that she performed her contractual

responsibilities well, and that at her annual performance review

in April of 2023, the Board rated her as exemplary in all

categories. Shortly thereafter, defendants Stepp, Newman, and

Terrazas were elected to replace three members of the Board who

had participated in plaintiff’s evaluation.

On May 25, 2023, Plaintiff was summoned to a closed session

of the Board’s regular scheduled meeting. There, defendant Dust

told plaintiff that he had met with unnamed administrators who

had complained in writing that plaintiff had verbally abused

them. Plaintiff was not shown the written complaints, nor did

she have any notice of them prior to the meeting. Plaintiff

denied the allegations of verbal abuse and explained that she

had “admonished an administrator because he made threats to

parents” and “admonished an administrator for sending

communications to parents riddled with grammatical errors.”

Compl. at ¶¶ 25, 26. Dust “ignored Plaintiff’s denials and warned

that she could face termination if she acted in such an

unprofessional manner in the future.” Id. at ¶ 27.

The following day, May 26, 2023, plaintiff reported to work.

The same day, the District’s counsel and defendant Stepp

contacted her to ask if she was resigning, and she told them

that she was not. Id. at ¶¶ 31-32. Accordingly, Ms. Stepp emailed

District employees informing them that plaintiff was not

resigning. Plaintiff also sent a letter to defendant Dust saying

she felt “blindsided” at the previous day’s meeting and “not

prepared to have the conversation with the Board regarding my

meeting with the TFS administrative staff.” Mot., ECF 10-1, Exh.

1.1 She told Mr. Dust, “I do plan on retiring prior to 2026. I

will not leave the district without a transition plan.” Id.

Plaintiff went on to describe the circumstances surrounding the

complaints against her. She then stated:

Threatening me with disciplinary action in the future

is not ok, so given that it is best I not continue my

tenure with the district. ... My level of trust with

the Board is tarnished and I believe not reconcilable.

Please note, I will continue to work with you and the

Board to amicably transition into retirement.

Id. But two days later, on May 28, 2023, Mr. Dust allegedly

instructed the District’s counsel to inform plaintiff that she

was prohibited from entering District facilities or contacting

District staff. Compl. at ¶ 33. Plaintiff then apparently

reversed course, telling District counsel on May 30, 2023, that

she intended to honor her full contract. Id. at ¶ 35.

1 I agree with defendant that I may consider this letter because

plaintiff refers to it in her complaint, and it is central to

her claims. Venture Assocs. Corp. v. Zenith Data Sys. Corp., 987

F.2d 429, 431 (7th Cir. 1993).

Nevertheless, she was locked out of her District email account

and told that her salary was terminated as of May 25, 2023,

effectively terminating her employment. The Board ratified her

termination on May 30, 2023, when it voted to replace her. Id.

at ¶¶ 36-37. The following day, Mr. Dust sent an email to

District employees falsely stating that plaintiff had resigned

at the May 25, 2023, Board meeting, and he caused a local

newspaper to publish information to the same effect.

On June 15, 2023, plaintiff received a letter from Mr. Dust

stating:

On behalf of the Board of Education of Thornton

Fractional School District 215, I am writing to you

with regard to your resignation on May 25, 2023. It

has come to the attention of the Board that you are

disputing the facts regarding and/or the effectiveness

of your resignation.

Based upon this dispute and in an effort to provide

you with an opportunity to present your version of

events pertaining to your resignation, the Board of

Education is offering you a hearing regarding the

same. ...

Mot., ECF 10-2, Exh. 2. Plaintiff declined to attend the hearing.

This action followed, which defendants move to dismiss. I deny

the motion for the following reasons.

“A public employee who can be fired only for good cause has

a property interest in his or her job and may be deprived of

that property interest only with due process of law.” Carmody v.

Bd. of Trustees of Univ. of Illinois, 747 F.3d 470, 474 (7th

Cir. 2014). Defendants do not dispute that plaintiff has a

property interest in her job. They argue, however, that she

resigned her position on May 25, 2023, and that “an employee who

resigns—voluntarily relinquishing her interest in continued

employment—may not complain of a lack of due process.” Ulrey v.

Reichhart, 941 F.3d 255, 261 (7th Cir. 2019). Relatedly,

defendants acknowledge that due process generally requires

notice and a pre-termination hearing, but they argue that because

plaintiff’s termination resulted from her unexpected

resignation, a pre-termination hearing was infeasible. See

Simpson v. Brown Cnty., 860 F.3d 1001, 1006 (7th Cir. 2017).

Accordingly, defendants insist that they satisfied their due

process obligations by offering plaintiff a hearing after it

became clear that she disputed her termination. Having declined

to participate in that hearing, defendants contend, plaintiff

cannot now be heard to complain that her due process rights were

violated.

Defendants’ argument is not without traction, but it is

grounded on a central fact that does not appear in the complaint,

nor does it clearly emerge from the documents attached to

defendants’ motion, and that plaintiff disputes: that plaintiff

resigned her position at the May 25 Board meeting. The first

mention in the pleadings of plaintiff’s putative resignation is

in her allegation that on May 26, she told defendant Stepp that

she was not resigning her position—a message Stepp apparently

understood, as she allegedly communicated it to other District

employees. True, plaintiff told Dust that same day that she

intended to retire prior to the expiration of her contract (a

statement plaintiff apparently tried to walk back on May 30th).

But what she contemplated in her letter to Dust was an

“amicabl[e] transition” into retirement, not an abrupt

termination of her duties and her salary. Drawing all inferences

from the complaint and attachments to defendant’s motion in the

light most favorable to plaintiff, a reasonable conclusion—

though not the only one—is that plaintiff did not resign but was

summarily terminated after the Board’s May 25, 2023, meeting. At

this juncture, I cannot conclude that plaintiff’s due process

claim fails on the ground that she resigned her job.

Nor can I determine on the present record whether the post-

termination hearing the Board offered to plaintiff was

sufficient to satisfy due process. “The fundamental requirement

of due process is the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful

time and in a meaningful manner.” Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S.

319, 333 (1976) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

In some circumstances, the state may satisfy due process through

post-deprivation process, so long as that process is capable of

offering “meaningful redress for the particular injury suffered

by the plaintiff.” Simpson, 860 F.3d at 1010. “Meaningful post-

deprivation remedies are ‘characterized by promptness and by the

ability to restore the claimant to possession.’” Id. Here,

plaintiff concedes that on June 15, 2023, approximately two weeks

after she made clear that she did not intend to resign and

contested her termination, she was offered the opportunity to

present “[her] version of the events pertaining to [her]

resignation” at a hearing scheduled for the following week, but

she declined to participate. In defendants’ view, plaintiff’s

decision not to participate in that hearing amounted to a waiver

of her due process rights, citing Carmody v. Bd. of Trustees of

Univ. of Illinois, 747 F.3d 470 (7th Cir. 2014), and Swank v.

Smart, 999 F.2d 263 (7th Cir. 1993). Again, their argument is

colorable, but only when the facts concerning plaintiff’s

termination are construed in their favor.

“Even where there is a robust post-termination

procedure...a meaningful opportunity to be heard before the

employer decides on termination is a critical protection.”

Carmody, 747 F.3d at 475. On defendant’s account of events, no

pre-termination hearing was required or even possible, since

plaintiff’s termination was the result of her unforeseen

resignation. While that may be true, if I credit plaintiff’s

version—which I must do for present purposes—then plaintiff was

summarily dismissed without the minimum process required by

Cleveland Board of Educ. v. Loudermill, which includes “oral or

written notice of the charges against [her], an explanation of

the employer’s evidence, and an opportunity to present [her]

side of the story.” 470 U.S. 532, 546 (1985). In short, until

discovery brings to light the details of what drove the Board’s

decision to replace plaintiff as Superintendent, the merits of

her due process claim cannot be adjudicated.2

Plaintiff’s claim against Mr. Dust for tortious

interference with contract survives dismissal for similar

reasons. Defendants argue that this claim must be dismissed

because Dust acted as an agent of the Board with respect to the

conduct plaintiff attributes to him, and a party cannot

tortiously interfere with its own contract. That is correct as

a legal proposition. Douglas Theater Corp. v. Chicago Title &

Tr. Co., 681 N.E.2d 564, 567 (Ill. 1997) (“[i]t is settled law

that a party cannot tortiously interfere with his own

contract.”). But if, as plaintiff alleges, she was an exemplary

2 For similar reasons, defendants’ qualified immunity argument

is premature. If, as plaintiff alleges, the Board voted to

replace her ostensibly on the ground that she had resigned but

actually knowing that she had not, then their misconduct was

intentional and they are not shielded from liability by qualified

immunity.

employee whom Dust targeted for ouster then removed on a ground

he knew was pretextual, he was not acting in the Board’s best

interest. In such circumstances, a reasonable inference is that

Dust acted outside the scope of his agency and in service of his

own personal goals, in which case he may be liable for tortious

interference with plaintiff’s contract. See Cox v. Calumet Pub.

Sch. Dist. 132, 180 F. Supp. 3d 556, 565 (N.D. Ill. 2016). For

Similar reasons, Dust is not entitled, at this stage, to

dismissal of this claim based on the affirmative defense of

absolute immunity, or to dismissal of plaintiff’s prayer for

punitive damages. See id. (declining to dismiss prayer for

punitive damages because it was “too early to tell” if defendant

was acting in her official capacity).

For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion to dismiss is

denied.

ENTER ORDER:

IZ, - 5 / (

Elaine E. Bucklo

United States District Judge

Dated: January 5, 2024