Appeals court: Officer who killed Philando Castile was wrongly denied license to teach

Josh Verges, Pioneer Press
Updated ·3 min read
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The state board that licenses teachers wrongly denied a substitute teaching license to the former police officer who killed Philando Castile, according to a panel of Minnesota Court of Appeals judges who on Monday sent the case back to the board for reconsideration.

The judges found the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards board inappropriately concluded that Jeronimo Yanez’s actions as a police officer amount to “immoral character or conduct” under a state statute that sets the grounds for teacher license revocations and suspensions.

In sending the case back to the board, the judges said the board may consider the conduct clause only as it relates to Yanez’s “fitness to teach.” And they cautioned the board not to “condemn lawful police practices,” such as stopping drivers for minor violations.

“The board’s decision must focus exclusively on Yanez’s conduct and his fitness to be a teacher, not fitness to be a police officer,” the panel wrote.

Yanez shot and killed Castile in St. Anthony in 2016 after pulling him over for an inoperable brake light. Yanez said Castile, who was Black, looked like a robbery suspect.

During their brief interaction, Castile told the officer he had a gun on him, and Yanez warned him not to reach for it. Yanez fired his gun several times, killing Castile and nearly hitting Castile’s girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter.

A jury in 2017 found Yanez not guilty of manslaughter, but he left law enforcement after the trial and gave up his peace officer’s license.

Teaching Spanish

According to the appellate court’s order, Yanez was teaching Spanish part-time and without a license at a Catholic school in February 2020 when he applied for a three-year, short-call substitute teaching license. He acknowledged on his application to the board that he had been acquitted of a violent crime.

The board’s disciplinary committee wrote several months later that it intended to deny his application “because it believes that (Yanez’s) involvement in the shooting and death of Philando Castile is misconduct which is a ground for the Board to refuse to issue a teaching license.”

Yanez appealed, and an administrative law judge held a contested case hearing in July 2021. Joe Gothard, superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, where Castile was working in food service when he was killed, served as an expert witness.

“No school-aged child should have a licensed educator who took the life of a Black man in the way (Yanez) did when he killed Mr. Castile,” Gothard testified.

Yanez’s school principal, who was not named in the appellate court decision, also testified. He said Yanez had an excellence performance rating for the school year and had strengthened the school’s Spanish program.

The administrative law judge ultimately recommended the licensing board deny Yanez’s application, writing that Yanez should not have killed Castile and that his “prejudgments of Mr. Castile are indicative of racial bias, microaggressions, and negativity bias that are detrimental to students, especially students of color.”

The judge also found that Yanez’s “pretextual stop, racial profiling, and killing of Mr. Castile constitute immoral conduct (that was) morally wrong, and deeply hurtful and offensive to the community.”

The licensing board adopted that recommendation last December, denying Yanez’s application for immoral conduct. Yanez then appealed to the Court of Appeals, which on Monday sent the case back to the licensing board for reconsideration.

Yanez said during the application process that “second chances are important in education and life” and that “working as a substitute teacher certainly would be” for him, according to the appeals panel’s ruling.

His attorney, Robert Fowler, said during oral arguments that the outcome of the case will affect not only Yanez but other former police officers looking to become licensed in a variety of regulated fields.

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