Junior high school teacher Brett Gilman is pictured Thursday, October 19, 2023 in Las Vegas. Gilman received a $150,000 settlement from the Clark County School District this month to resolve the free speech and retaliation lawsuit he filed after a social media feud with School Board member Katie Williams led to a suspension and internal investigations. Brian Ramos.
Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School District will pay a teacher $150,000 after putting him under internal administrative and police investigations that kept him out of the classroom for months following an extended social media beef with a School Board member, according to both parties.
The settlement closes out a lawsuit filed in February by Brett Gilman, a reading teacher at Garside Junior High School in Las Vegas, over alleged retaliation that started in online interactions with School Board member Katie Williams.
Both are active social media users who frequently post about political and social issues. Gilman’s takes are progressive; Williams’ are conservative.
The lawsuit alleged several actions by Williams but named the district as the sole defendant. Among the lawsuit’s charges was that the district placed Gilman on home assignment pending an internal review of his social media activity.
The sides settled earlier this month. The settlement also closes out the internal investigations.
“This isn’t about Katie Williams. I did not name Katie Williams as a defendant because Katie Williams didn’t take official action. She’s not my employer,” Gilman said in an interview. “CCSD is my employer. They started investigations. They put me on home assignment — whether she had anything to do with it, I can only make assumptions. I cannot speak facts because nobody’s ever told me anything.”
He said he found out he was the subject of a police investigation from the attorney he retained when he was put on home assignment, but that both he and his lawyer received scant details.
CCSD confirmed the settlement amount but did not have a comment.
Williams, speaking as an individual and not for the School Board, said Gilman’s case spoke “to the bullying we see from the public consistently that’s created by having a privileged life.”
“Bullying someone all day and then getting upset when they defend themselves by crying foul and not dealing with the consequences for their actions is disappointing,” she said. “This man is an adult who teaches children in our district, who runs a page and column on criticizing elected politicians at every level. At one point or another you must ask yourself where the values may lie with this individual when he’s teaching children.”
Gilman sued CCSD in Clark County District Court. CCSD successfully moved the case to U.S. District Court in March, citing Gilman’s allegations that his constitutional rights to free speech and against discrimination had been infringed.
In his suit, Gilman alleged that he and Williams started engaging on X, then known as Twitter, while Williams was still a School Board 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 stated.
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 said that during his home assignment, which took place when all schools were on distance learning because of the pandemic, a substitute had direct interactions with his students online while he posted lesson plans and graded assignments.
He said he felt humiliated upon his return to teaching in August 2021 because all his colleagues knew was that he had been in some kind of trouble. He said he sought therapy and still takes sleeping pills.
Gilman continues to teach at Garside. He said the 2024-25 school year would be his last before retiring.
His lawsuit alleged political discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to violations of Gilman’s right to free speech. It argued that because his online activity was outside of work in a non-CCSD setting and involved political discourse and the criticism of an elected official, his posts were protected speech.
In his complaint, Gilman acknowledged that his exchanges with Williams could be personal, with lobs coming from both sides. For example, Gilman called Williams “a scourge on our district” and made a derisive comment about her weight; Williams mocked Gilman’s health after he had spinal surgery, and taunted him after she won election to the School Board in November 2020 with a post that included the hashtag #soreloser.
In its response to the lawsuit, CCSD said that Gilman had “unclean hands’’ and was “at least partially responsible for the claimed wrong” because he posted “threatening statements.” It was not clear what the district considered threatening; Gilman acknowledged being harsh but denied making threats.
“I’m not proud of everything I wrote,” he said. “I’ll be the first to say, I wrote some vile, immature, sophomoric, rude things. But it’s still protected speech.”
Gilman said while the district was not accepting responsibility or liability — by definition, the settlement does neither of those things — by paying him, it is taking accountability. (According to district regulations, $150,000 is the maximum settlement the district can pay out without putting it on a School Board agenda.)
The award is worth close to three years’ salary, but Gilman said his lawsuit wasn’t about the money.
“This was about targeting, retaliating. Do I believe (Williams) was pulling the strings? I will say it again: I can only make an assumption here,” he said. “But she did go out on Instagram and she did mention me by name, and did say she was coming after me and that she was going to enforce the anti-bullying policy, and sure enough, boom, I get put on home assignment shortly after she’s sworn in.”
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.
She said it was the silencing of a conservative voice. Pageant organizers said it was because she didn’t separate political commentary from her pageant duties, according to reports.
