School district to teacher: Don’t say “God”

Attorneys representing Bay Area teacher Thomas Schemkes appeared before a federal district judge on Thursday, arguing to keep their client’s lawsuit alive after he was fired for allowing a classroom discussion of Adam and Eve.

The middle school teacher filed a lawsuit in April that challenged his firing on multiple grounds, including violation of the First Amendment and various provisions of California employment law.

According to the complaint, Hillview Middle School, just outside San Jose, hired Schemkes to teach science a few weeks before the 2022 school year began. During the first week of classes, administrators were still finalizing the curriculum outline, which left Schemkes improvising his time in the classroom.

At one point, Schemkes lectured on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, then initiated an in-class discussion by asking students for their theories on how life began. The lawsuit describes how one student suggested aliens mated with monkeys, while another student said God created Adam and Eve. Schemkes acknowledged that some people believe that God created humans, then moved on from the discussion.

Later that night, Schemkes said, he attended a social event for staff, where the school’s interim principal, Danielle O’Brien, asked him about his hobbies. Schemkes mentioned working on a screenplay about first-century history and the life of Jesus.

The next day, O’Brien asked Schemkes if he had been teaching about the Bible in the classroom. He explained that a student brought up Adam and Eve during an open discussion, and the principal warned him that attendees of the parent night scheduled that evening may ask him more about it.

Parents did question Schemkes, who explained that it was in the context of a class-led discussion in which he did not affirm the student’s theory as true and acknowledged that others thought similarly. The next day, Schemkes received an email from O’Brien: “You will not teach about God or quote from the Bible in your class, you will follow your curriculum.”

Later the same day, acting Superintendent Kristen Gracias went to Schemkes’ classroom with immediate termination paperwork, requesting that he sign it. “You are just not a good fit,” she told him. Schemkes asked to see his union representative before signing, but he was then escorted out of the school, according to the lawsuit. Officials fired Schemkes less than a week into the new school year with little to no explanation for why, attorneys argued. The teacher later sued the district for free speech violations and discrimination.

Schemkes does not hold traditional Christian beliefs, his attorney Alan Reinach told WORLD during a Friday interview. “He was raised Catholic, but his views are rather eccentric,” Reinach said. “He was typecast as some kind of creationist fundamentalist.” The attorney described his client as an idiosyncratic believer, adding that Schemkes didn’t even know what the term “creation science” meant.

“When I asked him, ‘Well, what do you believe about [human] origins?’ he wasn’t entirely sure,” Reinach explained. “So this is not a case about a traditional Roman Catholic with traditional views, or an evangelical, being fired. It’s that he was stereotyped as somebody that he was not.”

The attorney said that the district discriminated against his client on the basis of a perceived religion, beyond simple discrimination. Schemkes was fired because of how others incorrectly viewed him. The school’s actions constitute religious discrimination based on his speech and what he said about religion both in and out of class, he added.

Attorney Desiri Schele represented the school district during the Thursday hearing and argued, as she did in her motion to dismiss the case, that Schemkes’ speech inside the classroom is not constitutionally protected. She contended that a classroom is a captive audience, so a teacher’s speech isn’t protected by the First Amendment.

“Essentially, that teacher is speaking on behalf of the district, not on behalf of themselves as a private citizen,” she said. “That type of speech is not considered private speech; therefore [it] is not protected under the First Amendment.”

Schemkes’ attorneys argued in their response that the First Amendment claim included more than his comments in class and was based on his speech outside of the classroom as well. Colson Andrews, a bar-certified student at the Stanford Law School Religious Liberty Clinic who represented Schemkes, questioned the timing of the teacher’s sudden dismissal, given the timeline of events.

“He’s told, ‘You’re not a good fit,’ told to not discuss religion in the classroom, has this conversation with the principal and others at a staff gathering,” Andrews noted. “We’re talking about a few days here—it’s all intertwined.”

The district’s motion to dismiss called for the court to dismiss Schemkes’ constitutional claims and remove several individual school board members—sued in their individual capacities— from the case. The dismissal motion doesn’t include the alleged religious discrimination points, so regardless of how the judge rules on the dismissal motion, the case will still move forward, Reinach explained.

WORLD reached out to Menlo Park City School District’s attorneys for an interview but did not receive a reply in time for publication.