Former Metro schools administrator sues again two years after successful retaliation suit
A former public schools official who secured a hefty payout from a successful retaliation lawsuit against Metro Nashville Public Schools is now suing the school district for retaliation again after not being reinstated to her previous position.
A federal judge in August 2022 ordered MNPS to reinstate Euna McGruder as its executive officer of priority schools for the 2022-2023 school year, but McGruder argues in the new lawsuit that the school district "weaponized the legal process" to avoid having to do so.
In her lawsuit, McGruder says that MNPS' research of her bankruptcy filing in 2018 — which Metro admits in court documents it only learned of after it was ordered to give McGruder her job back four years later — was a "last-ditch attempt to dodge reinstatement."
In response, the Metro Department of Law, which represents MNPS in lawsuits, defended the search that revealed McGruder's bankruptcy as routine and said it nor "subsequent action in the case" was retaliatory.
"The law required Ms. McGruder to report the lawsuit as an asset in the bankruptcy case, and courts have upheld dismissals of unreported lawsuits on judicial estoppel grounds," Metro Legal said in a statement.
From November 2015 to January 2016, McGruder investigated and discovered incidents of "race discrimination and a hostile work environment affecting teachers and students" at Madison Middle School, the lawsuit states. She was fired in January 2016.
McGruder sued the school district for the first time in December 2017, and a jury awarded her $260,000 in damages after her retaliation claim went to trial in December 2021.
In September 2022, the same judge that ordered MNPS to give McGruder her previous job back temporarily blocked her reinstatement while MNPS appealed the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The basis of MNPS' appeal was that McGruder had failed to disclose her lawsuit against the school district when she filed for bankruptcy less than a year after she sued for retaliation, which is required by law. Her bankruptcy petition was granted in October 2018 in federal bankruptcy court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Metro Legal said it conducted a search for bankruptcies in the Middle District of Tennessee "well before trial," but the department could not find the proceeding because it was done out of state.
"After the trial court issued its ruling, a routine search made in the course of defending the litigation and relating to Ms. McGruder’s place of employment in Georgia led to the discovery of her bankruptcy filing," Metro Legal said in its statement. "Nothing about that search or the subsequent action in the case was retaliatory."
MNPS attorneys argued that McGruder acted in bad faith by not mentioning the lawsuit in her bankruptcy petition and asked that the jury verdict awarding her six figures in damages be reversed.
"Given that Plaintiff’s bankruptcy action discharged over $100,000 in debt, Plaintiff not only had a motive to conceal this (lawsuit), but the motive was a substantial one," MNPS attorneys wrote in a motion filed with the federal appeals court in September 2022.
The new lawsuit states that MNPS' "legal maneuvers were not timely or the product of good-faith litigation defense, rather were motivated by unlawful animus with unclean hands." McGruder also argues that MNPS failed to identify the bankruptcy issue in its initial notice of appeal to the Sixth Circuit.
McGruder is asking for front pay or reinstatement, as well as damages "to be determined at trial, but to exceed" $5 million.
McGruder filed the new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on Dec. 14. She is represented by Nashville attorney Brian Winfrey, who also handled her first lawsuit against the district.
MNPS said it could not comment on ongoing litigation and deferred to Metro Legal.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Ex-Metro schools official sues again two years after winning first suit
