Board member Katie Williams attends a CCSD Board of Trustees meeting at the Clark County School District Education Center Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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A Clark County School District teacher is suing the district after a School Board member allegedly retaliated against him over heated social media exchanges by causing district administrators and police to launch investigations that sidelined him from the classroom for months.
Brett Gilman, who teaches reading at Garside Junior High School in Las Vegas, is active on social media with posts showing his progressive political views. Those posts frequently clashed with School Board member Katie Williams, a vocal conservative, on Twitter.
In his lawsuit filed Feb. 1 in Clark County District Court, Gilman alleges that he and Williams started engaging on Twitter while Williams was still a candidate in 2020. Not long after Williams won election to the board, she posted a video to Instagram “in which she threatened to go after Mr. Gilman and ‘any other teacher who happens to hate (her) guts’ and to ‘enforce’ CCSD’s anti-bullying policy after she was sworn in,” the complaint states.
Although Gilman’s lawsuit alleges several actions by Williams, he is only suing the district.
Williams declined comment Tuesday. The district does not comment on pending litigation, officials said.
According to the complaint, in February 2021, Gilman’s supervisors temporarily placed him on “home assignment” and directed him not to have contact with Garside students, staff or families, pending an internal employee-management relations review of his social media activity.
District police reportedly launched a related investigation in March 2021.
Gilman returned to the classroom in August 2021, though he claims that the police and internal reviews remain open. In his complaint, Gilman acknowledged that his interactions with Williams could be personal.
“Ms. Williams and Mr. Gilman had numerous Twitter exchanges that illustrated their divergent views regarding politics and social issues, and some of those Twitter exchanges included personal insults wherein either Ms. Williams or Mr. Gilman would state something to elicit a response from the other. … The back and forth escalated to vitriolic insults on both sides,” the suit states.
For example, according to the complaint: While Williams was a candidate, Gilman posted that she was a “racist and a COVID denier, and worse than that, a fake patriot,” a “scourge on our district,” and that she would “break (a) chair,” a reference to her weight.
Williams mocked Gilman’s health after he underwent spinal surgery, and after she won election to District B, which covers northwest Las Vegas and rural areas north of the valley, she tweeted “what hurts more @BrettDGilman? The fact that I won? Or the fact that I am your new boss?”
That Nov. 8, 2020, post from Williams, whose Twitter handle is @realkatiejow, has the hashtag #soreloser. It hasn’t been deleted.
Gilman said because his online activity was outside of work in a non-CCSD setting and involving political discourse and the criticism of an elected official, his posts were protected speech.
He alleges violations of his right to free speech under the U.S. and Nevada constitutions, political discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
He is seeking unspecified damages, including what he would have earned if he was able to teach summer school during his home assignment.
It’s not the first time Williams’ posts on social media have been scrutinized.
She was stripped of her Ms. Nevada crown in 2019 for Twitter posts, many in favor of former President Donald Trump.
At the time, she said it was the silencing of a conservative voice. Organizers say it’s because she didn’t separate political commentary from her pageant duties, according to reports.
“Unfortunately, conservative values are not just under attack in the pageant world; they are under attack everywhere,” Williams posted on her campaign site in 2020, where she’s pictured in a “Socialism Sucks” shirt. “In no place is that attack more present than within America’s public schools. That’s why I have chosen to run for the Clark County School Board and bring a new, common sense conservative voice to the table.”
Williams doesn’t have a background in education like other members of the board. She’s a combat veteran and member of the Nevada National Guard, where the Utah native in 2018 started in a master recruiting position, according to her bio on the School Board website.
