As a child, Lana Foster helped integrate South Georgia’s Echols County schools in 1970, then returned in the 1980s to teach in the same district where she earned Teacher of the Year honors.
But the district fired her in 2018 over alleged ethical violations, prompting her to file an open records lawsuit, which uncovered racist texts exchanged by two school board members involved in her dismissal.
She also filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial discrimination and retaliation, resulting in a $137,000 settlement in 2020.
In its settlement, the Echols County School District promised, among other things, to adopt hiring procedures and a recruitment plan aimed at increasing qualified Black applicants.
In 2023, Foster filed another lawsuit, accusing the district of breaking its promise. She recently told an Atlanta News First reporter that the district still employs no Black teachers, despite serving a county where Black residents make up 7 percent of the population.
The district responded by asking judges to dismiss the claims on the grounds of qualified immunity, which is a legal shield protecting government officials from civil liability unless they violate clearly established rights.
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Both a district and an appellate court denied the motions, prompting seven current and former school officials listed as defendants to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling rejecting their qualified-immunity defense.
The Supreme Court will convene on Dec. 4 to decide whether to hear the case.
“All reasonable government officials would know they cannot refuse to follow a contract because of the contracting party’s race,” the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote earlier this year in its decision to affirm the district court’s decision to deny defendants qualified immunity.
Foster’s legal conflicts with the district stretch back to 2009, when she filed a racial discrimination lawsuit, accusing the district of moving her from a regular teaching position to what she described as a less desirable alternative-school assignment.
Her lawsuit also said the district removed her as a sponsor from the Junior Beta Club, a middle school honor society promoting academic achievement, character, student leadership, and community service.
The Echols County School District settled that claim for $40,000 in 2011, restoring her to her previous teaching position and Junior Beta Club sponsor.
That settlement led to a federal investigation of the district in 2012, which resulted in a separate agreement requiring the district to reform its hiring practices and provide anti-discrimination training.
But Foster said the district never complied with that agreement.
Instead, the district fired her in 2018 over alleged ethical violations, leading her to file an open records lawsuit. That led her to uncover racist text messages exchanged between the board members involved in her termination.
Foster’s lawsuit states the racist texts included the N-word, a request for staff to dress in an “old South theme” as “mammies and butlers,” and a racist claim comparing Black children to animals.
Court records also show the Georgia Attorney General and Professional Standards Commission found “no probable cause” to support her termination on the ethics grounds cited by the district.
The district settled the EEOC complaint in 2020, agreeing to pay Foster $137,500, remove termination-related documents from her personnel file, reclassify her departure as a voluntary resignation, and provide a neutral reference.
The agreement also required the district to develop and implement publicly available hiring procedures, retain hiring records, and establish a recruitment plan aimed at increasing qualified Black applicants.
The agreement also required Foster to never apply for a job with the district again.
Foster filed the current lawsuit in August 2023 against the district, accusing defendants of not complying with the settlement because of “their race-based retaliatory animus toward Plaintiff.”
The school district asked the district court to dismiss the case on qualified immunity but was denied.
“Plaintiff has alleged ample facts which suggest intentional discrimination,” the district court wrote in its 2024 opinion.
“The Amended Complaint describes racial animus in detail, including the alleged discriminatory conduct which caused the District to settle two separate claims with Plaintiff. And references specific acts of discrimination by District employees.”
“Taken together, these allegations permit a reasonable inference that those employees had racial animus when they breached the Settlement Agreement,” the court opinion continues in its refusal to grant qualified immunity.
The district then filed an appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, but was also denied qualified immunity.
“The school officials’ argument, taken to its full extent, would give government officials a free pass to violate the law whenever the path to their personal liability is not well-trod. That cannot be the case,” the appellate ruling states in its denial.
“But we, like the district court, have little difficulty in reaching the narrow legal conclusion that as a matter of ‘obvious clarity,’ all reasonable government officials would know they cannot refuse to follow a contract because of the contracting party’s race.”
So now it comes down to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not yet decided to even review the case, a decision it will discuss on Dec. 4, before an actual decision that could take months.
Foster, who has spent her life fighting racism, says she has no plans to stop now.
“I’m being a warrior for everybody that has ever been mistreated,” she told Atlanta News First. “It’s so that everybody would be given a chance.”
