A Prior Lake teacher is suing her school district for disciplining her for an immigration-related social media post, alleging that her constitutional rights were violated.
Brooke Zahn, who teaches fourth grade at Jeffers Pond Elementary school in the Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools district, said in her lawsuit that she was “punished” because of her personal use of social media. She reshared an image last December advocating for deporting families with mixed immigration status back to their native countries. She was previously disciplined for making posts in 2021 that promoted anti-masking during the COVID-19 pandemic; that incident is also part of her lawsuit.
“I love my job as a teacher, and I am proud of my right to free speech,” Zahn said in a news release issued last Friday about the lawsuit. “The district’s decision to punish me for my private opinions was wrong. I am standing up for my rights as a citizen and to ensure this doesn’t happen to other teachers.”
The district said in an email statement to the Sahan Journal that it would not comment on pending litigation. Zahn filed her lawsuit in federal court last week; she did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Earlier this year, Zahn sent a letter to the district threatening to sue if they did not provide back pay for her seven-day suspension, issue a formal apology and rescind the disciplinary action against her. Zahn’s attorney, Doug Seaton, told Sahan Journal Tuesday that the district refused to fulfill her requests.
Seaton said he’s “very confident” that Zahn’s lawsuit will succeed, citing a 2022 lawsuit his law firm won representing a group of parents and students who sued Lakeville Area Schools over teachers displaying “Black Lives Matter” posters in class. The Lakeville school district paid the law firm $30,000 to settle the lawsuit this past April, and teachers took down the posters.
Zahn’s lawsuit is asking the district for monetary relief of “lost wages” and time she spent taking a cultural competency class as part of her 2024 discipline. She is also requesting that the district remove the 2024 and 2021 disciplinary letters from her personnel file.
“The school district doesn’t have a right to approve or disapprove of her private speech as a citizen,” Seaton said of Zahn’s case.
The district suspended Zahn without pay for seven days last December and ordered her to take a cultural competency training class after she reshared an image of a cartoon family and the words, “A FAMILY THAT IS DEPORTED TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER,” in a Facebook group. She deactivated her Facebook account and is currently teaching at Jeffers Pond.
Zahn was hired in 2016 as an elementary teacher at Jeffers Pond Elementary School. She earned her teaching certification at the University of Minnesota, and previously taught in Ohio, Massachusetts and Texas.
According to Zahn’s lawsuit: She shared the post in a private Facebook group, and people who were not members of that group and people from “activist groups” began spreading it publicly online. Eventually, Zahn was identified as a Prior Lake teacher. About two dozen emails to the school district raised concerns about the post; Zahn said they did not come from parents with children in her class.
The lawsuit says the district emailed families in December 2024 about her post, which drew more attention to the post and expressed “disapproval” of Zahn’s “outside-of-work comments.”
Zahn “felt the need” to remove herself from school committees and eat lunch in her classroom alone after she returned from her suspension, according to the suit.
The district’s disciplinary letter for the December Facebook post said the post caused “significant educational disruption across the district.” Some parents asked to remove their children from Zahn’s class, or to not have their children placed in her class in the future, according to the letter. It also referenced her two previous violations of the district’s social media policy.
Sahan Journal obtained Zahn’s personnel file earlier this year, which showed that the district first reprimanded Zahn in 2021 for making social media posts about her refusal to wear a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic and not requiring her students to wear masks in her classroom. She received another disciplinary letter from the district the next month for not requiring her students to wear masks.
“I will not be covering my face, I will not require my kids to, and if others will take a stand and do the same, we will be an army that puts an end to this nonsensical battle,” she wrote in one post, according to the district’s 2021 disciplinary letter.
She was ordered to review district policies, not engage in retaliation and to refrain from similar conduct in the future. She was also suspended for four days without pay that year for refusing to require her students to wear masks.
