CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – A former assistant principal in Virginia has filed a lawsuit against her school district’s Board of Education, alleging that she was “racially harassed” and ultimately forced to resign from her position due to her disagreement with new Critical Race Theory (CRT) related training that she was mandated to undergo.
Emily Mais, who was employed at Agnor-Hurt Elementary School until last September, says that she was repeatedly subjected to a “racially hostile work environment” before finally leaving her job as assistant principal “to preserve her mental health.”
Mais claims that she was made to participate in a training session on CRT-based school curriculum which involved a book called “Courageous Conversations about Race.” The book, in use in the school district since 2019, singles out people in ways both positive and negative based on their individual race, and says that only white people – or, as the book refers to them as, the “dominant face” – can, in fact, be racist.
CRT teachings essentially that institutions in the United States are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that are designed to keep white people in power at the expense of minorities.
While engaged in the CRT training session, Mais asked a question, but claims she had a “slip of the tongue” and accidently referred to “people of color” as “colored people.” She said that, despite apologizing right away for her mistake, she was nonetheless immediately and repeatedly berated by other staff members.
“Another teacher who was in that training began berating her in front of others, even though she had apologized,” said attorney Kate Anderson, who is representing Mais in her lawsuit. “The district started calling her into meetings and telling her that her apologies didn’t matter. They didn’t care if it was a slip of the tongue.”
Anderson also noted that Mais took exception with the CRT-based curriculum and how she claimed it singled out students for different treatment based solely on their race; when she brought her concerns to higher-ups in the district, she said she was quickly ostracized and branded a “racist.”
“[The CRT curriculum] told teachers that they had to treat students differently based on their race. Teach them differently, grading them differently, discipline them differently,” Anderson said. “She’s branded a troublemaker for speaking out against a policy that was overtly racist to students. She was branded a racist, severely and pervasively harassed, relentlessly humiliated and ultimately compelled to resign from a job that she loved to preserve her mental health.”
The Board of Education has not yet publicly commented on the pending litigation brought by Mais and her attorney.
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