MacRae v. Mattos

106 F.4th 122

Kari MACRAE, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Matthew MATTOS; Matthew A. Ferron;Hanover Public Schools, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 23-1817

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit

June 28, 2024

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, [Hon. Denise J. Casper, U.S. District Judge]

Michael Bekesha, with whom Judicial Watch, Inc. was on brief, for appellant.

Gregor A. Pagnini, with whom Leonard H. Kesten, Deidre Brennan Regan, and Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten LLP were on brief, for appellees.

Before Gelpí, Selya, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

Today's appeal was brought by Kari MacRae ("MacRae"), a former teacher at Hanover High School ("Hanover High") in Hanover, Massachusetts, against Hanover High's principal Matthew Mattos ("Mattos"), Hanover High's superintendent Matthew A. Ferron ("Ferron"), and Hanover Public Schools ("the District" and, collectively with Mattos and Ferron, "Defendants"). And here's the CliffsNotes' version of how the parties made it to our bench: MacRae posted six allegedly controversial memes to her personal TikTok account.¹ A few months after posting the first few of the six memes, she interviewed for a teaching position at Hanover High and got the job. Soon after starting there, MacRae's TikTok posts came to light and things hit the proverbial fan. Concluding that to "continu[e] [her] employment in light of [her] social media posts would have a significant negative impact on student learning" at Hanover High, Defendants terminated MacRae's employment.

Positive that Defendants had unconstitutionally retaliated against her for exercising her First Amendment rights, MacRae took them to court. But Defendants didn't agree with her take on things, and neither did the district court, which granted their motion for summary judgment. Now on appeal, MacRae implores us to do some course correction and fix what she says the district court got wrong. After taking the time to carefully review both sides' arguments, however, we conclude that the district court got it right. In other words, we affirm, but before explaining our reasons for doing so, a bit of factual and procedural table-setting is in order.

TABLE-SETTING

To begin, we set the table with a factual and procedural summary of how the parties got here. And as this is an appeal of the grant a motion for summary judgment, we lay out the facts in the light kindest to the nonmovant (here, MacRae), drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor but only to the extent such inferences are supported by the record. Hamdallah v. CPC Carolina PR, LLC, 91 F.4th 1, 8 n.1 (1st Cir. 2024). The following facts are uncontested, unless indicated otherwise.

The TikTok Posts

MacRae is a Bourne, Massachusetts resident, who started working as a teacher in 2015 and has held several teaching positions since then. In or around 2019, she created her own personal TikTok account under the username of "NanaMacof4."² At different points in 2021, but all prior to her employment at Hanover High, MacRae liked, shared, posted, or reposted the following six memes using her NanaMacof4 TikTok account:

• A photo of Dr. Rachel Levine, the United States Assistant Secretary for Health and a transgender woman, with text that reads: " 'I'm an expert on mental health and food disorders.' . . . says the obese man who thinks he's a woman."

• A text display that reads: "I feel bad for parents nowadays. You have to be able to explain the birds & the bees . . . The bees & the bees . . . The birds & the birds . . . The birds that used to be bees . . . The bees that used to be birds . . . The birds that look like bees . . . Plus bees that look like birds but still got a stinger!!! . . ."

• A photo of a muscular, bearded man wearing a sports bra with text at the top that reads: "Hi my name is Meagan, I'm here for the Girl's track meet." The photo then includes additional text at the bottom that reads: "Equality doesn't always mean equity."³

• A photo of a young and (presumably) white American man with text that reads: "Retirement Plan: 1) Move to Mexico 2) Give up citizenship 3) Come back illegally 4) Set for life!"

• A photo of a panda bear with text that reads: "Dude, racism is stupid. I am black, white, and Asian. But everyone loves me."

• A photo of Thomas Sowell with a quote that reads: "Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists.' " The photo then includes additional text at the top that reads: "Thank you Mr Sowell!!"

Also in 2021, MacRae ran unchallenged for a seat in her hometown on the Bourne School Committee, which was scheduled to hold an election on May 17, 2021. On election day, MacRae posted a campaign video on her NanaMacof4 TikTok account. In the video, she can be seen discussing her election platform and beliefs as a school board candidate:

So pretty much the reason why I ran for school board and the reason why I'm taking on this responsibility is to ensure that students, at least in our town, are not being taught critical race theory. That they're not being taught that the country was built on racism. . . . So . . . they're not being taught that they can choose whether or not they want to be a girl or a boy. . . . It's one thing to include and it's one thing to be inclusive. And it's one thing to educate everybody about everything. It's completely another thing to push your agenda. . . . With me on the school board, that won't happen in our town.⁴

MacRae won the election.

A few months after her election win, in late August 2021, MacRae interviewed with the District's Curriculum Director Matthew Plummer ("Plummer") for a teaching position at Hanover High, a public school in Massachusetts about forty-five minutes away from Bourne. At the time of the interview, Plummer did not know about MacRae's TikTok posts or that she was an elected member of the Bourne School Committee. By letter dated August 25, 2021, the District informed her that she got the job and was set to start teaching math and business courses on September 1, 2021. Among the students MacRae was hired to teach were both African American and LGBTQ+⁵ students.

The Fallout

On the very same day that MacRae was hired for the position at Hanover High, August 25, 2021, the Bourne School Committee received a letter from a "concerned citizen" complaining about MacRae's TikTok posts. That letter had a domino effect, which ultimately resulted in the termination of MacRae's employment at Hanover High.

During the evening of September 1, 2021 (the same day MacRae started teaching at Hanover High), the Bourne School Committee held an executive session, at which it determined that some of MacRae's TikTok posts violated the core values of Bourne Public Schools. The Bourne School Committee also stated it would have a public resolution at its next meeting to further address the issue and hear a "more formal statement" from MacRae. MacRae did not inform any Defendant about her posts or any of the goings-on related to the Bourne School Committee's September 1, 2021 executive session.

In the following days, the situation worsened. On September 15, 2021, the Bourne School Committee and Committee Chairperson were informed "that the social media posts directed at the LGBTQ population had circulated and staff and students were very upset." The Bourne Educators Association also met and voted unanimously "to make a public statement against the comments made by" MacRae.

All of this commotion ended up attracting the attention of the Cape Cod Times, a local newspaper which published an article about MacRae on Friday, September 17, 2021. The article discussed MacRae's social media activity and the reactions thereto from the Bourne School Committee and members of the Bourne community. It also indicated that the Bourne School Committee had scheduled its next meeting for Wednesday, September 22, 2021, during which MacRae and members of the public could make a statement.⁶

By the morning of Monday, September 20, 2021, Plummer caught wind of the Cape Cod Times article because Stacey Pereira ("Pereira"), a business teacher at Hanover High, had seen the article over the weekend on her Facebook feed,⁷ was concerned about its impact on the students, and brought it to Plummer's attention. Plummer thereafter sent a link to the article to Mattos and Ferron, who (to refresh the memory) are Hanover High's principal and superintendent, respectively. Their response was swift: Later that same morning, Mattos met with MacRae to inform her that Defendants had learned of her social media posts and had chosen to place her on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. Within the first day or so of MacRae's leave, Andrew McLean ("McLean"), a science teacher at Hanover High and Vice President of the Hanover Teacher's Union, overheard some students talking about MacRae's social media posts, but, when asked during a deposition taken a year later, could not recall the exact details of the students' conversation.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 finally arrived and brought with it the Bourne School Committee's meeting. At the meeting, several people presented their concerns regarding MacRae's social media posts, including that "the posts did not create a safe, inclusive or welcoming learning environment within the school community." Among the speakers against the posts was a transgender student who highlighted that MacRae's posts were harmful to himself and any other transgender student. Other speakers put forth statistical data regarding the elevated risk of suicide in LGBTQ+ and African American youth. There were also some speakers who voiced support for MacRae. MacRae's supporters expressed their opinions that critical race theory should not be taught in Bourne Public Schools and that the Bourne School Committee was engaging in a "witch hunt" against MacRae. During the meeting,...