Sarah Inama Takes Idaho To Court

Sarah Inama is the Idaho middle school teacher who was told to get rid of her "Everyone is Welcome Here" poster. 

The boneheads at West Ada School District decided that the sentiment, combined with an image of hands of different skin colors, was just too political to be tolerated, citing Idaho's House Bill 41, yet another bill designed to censor any double-plus-ungood ideas that teachers tried to express. 

So now Inama is going after that bill.

There's a whole lot of racism involved in the law and its enforcement, and the state Attorney General Raul Labrador went the extra mile to clarify that, in fact, everyone is not welcome in Idaho classrooms (no, he didn't use those exact words, but the sentiment was clear). Labrador issued a press release/op-ed (picked up by Fox, of course) that framed the whole flap as "One state's bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke 'welcome" signs." 

I'm going to write a whole separate post on how this "woke" message is "political," rather than digress wildly here. Suffice it to say that the anti-inclusiveness in West Ada ran all the way from local parents all the way up to the state capital.

After battling her district, Inama got out of West Ada and immediately found a new home in the Boise school district, where she can put up her scary woke signs in her classroom. And she could be forgiven for just shaking the dust off her shoes and getting back to work. 

Instead, she has filed a lawsuit in federal court looking for a declaration that the state's flag and banner law is unconstitutional. 

The defendants in the in the lawsuit, filed February 3--

The Idaho State Board of Education
The Idaho Department of Education
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador
The West Ada School District
West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub
Monty Hyde, principal of West Ada’s Lewis and Clark Middle School

The suit points out Inama's distinguished career, and puts her posters in the context of a district attempt to make its schools, already struggling with some racism issues, more welcoming. The suit also points out that administration admitted, as they forced her to remove the posters, that no actual complaints had been lodged against them. 

Then all hell broke loose. Inama became a national story, and the administration and school board scrambled to make it go away (a crisis management technique familiar to teachers in districts across the nation). This included meetings with admins, including one at which the superintendent told Inama that he wanted to protect her from a smear campaign, but if she wouldn't let up on the issue, he would not be able to protect her. And then state decided to pipe up.

The lawsuit argues that the Speech law is vague and inconsistently applied. Inama is asking for damages, attorney fees, a jury trial and an injunction against the law.

Inama is represented by attorneys from Dorsey & Whitney, a large, high-powered firm, with the team including Elijah Watkins (a partner at the firm), Aaron Bell (an associate), Latonia Haney Keith (Dean of Graduate Studies at the College of Idaho, with a law degree from Harvard) and McKay Cunningham, a Constitutional law professor. The state has its work cut out for it. Here's hoping they lose big.