Former Riverhead elementary school teacher files $20 million federal lawsuit vs. district, trustees & administrators

Former Riverhead elementary school teacher Joe Johnson has filed a $20 million federal lawsuit against the school district, its trustees and top administrators claiming he was discriminated against because of his race.

Johnson’s employment was terminated this summer after a hearing officer ruled in favor of the district in disciplinary proceedings brought following his guilty plea to a DWI charge in November 2013. He appealed the termination decision in a state court action filed in September. That appeal is still pending.

In the federal lawsuit, filed last Friday, Johnson accuses the district of treating him differently than white school administrators who had DWI convictions but continued their employment with the district, including former high school principal David Zimbler and former assistant superintendent Joe Ogeka.

District officials created a hostile work environment and retaliated against him for filing a complaint last December with the State Human Rights Division And Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the complaint states.

Johnson is represented by Riverhead attorney Harriet Gilliam in both the federal suit and the state court appeal of the hearing officer’s decision.

The teacher was arrested on DWI and weapons possession charges in Southampton Village on April 21, 2012. Village police stopped Johnson at 3:35 a.m. on Hill Street. He was found to be intoxicated, driving with a suspended license and in possession of a loaded .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol, according to the police report of his arrest. He was subsequently indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury on felony weapons possession charges in addition to the misdemeanor DWI charge and a charge of aggravated unlicensed operation.

He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor DWI charge on Nov. 13, 2013. But prosecutors decided not to pursue the weapons charges because they “could not sustain the burden of proof necessary to establish the legality of the search” of Johnson’s car by village police officers following his arrest, according to a press release issued by the district attorney’s office the day of his plea. The gun was found in the glove compartment during a routine, post-arrest inventory search of Johnson’s car, the district attorney’s office said.

Johnson’s federal complaint provides a glimpse into the administrative processes taken by the district after he was arrested. Riverhead School Superintendent Nancy Carney told reporters the teacher was removed from the classroom and administratively reassigned to his home following his arrest. After Johnson’s indictment on May 8, 2012, Carney said the district would continue to monitor his case and make a decision about his employment after the criminal charges were resolved. She later said Johnson was taken off the district payroll that fall.

The complaint discloses that the district filed disciplinary charges against Johnson in June 2012, alleging that in 2005 he knowingly swore a false affidavit stating that he had no past criminal convictions.

The affidavit in question was submitted with an administrative internship application Johnson made to the district in 2005, according to the complaint. His fingerprint screening in connection with the internship application turned up 1996 convictions in Kansas on five counts of giving a worthless check and one count of criminal trespass, the complaint states. Charges of carrying a concealed weapon and possession of stolen property were dismissed, according to the complaint. He was sentenced to restitution and one year of probation.

Johnson “answered honestly, to the best of his knowledge, that he had not been convicted of any felony or misdemeanor or any DWI,” the complaint states. He did not intentionally make a false statement but had forgotten about the Kansas charges, “which had occurred many years before when he was a college student in Kansas,” the complaint states. Moreover, Johnson “did not actually understand that he had a conviction, as he had no legal counsel,” according to the complaint.

The State Education Department in 2005 ruled that his 1996 convictions would not disqualify him from the internship position and he was approved for the internship by the district, the complaint says.

But in June 2012, after his arrest in Southampton, the district brought him up on charges for making false statements on the 2005 application and filing a false affidavit with that application, according to the complaint.

Carney told RiverheadLOCAL after Johnson’s arraignment on the indictment in county court that Johnson was fingerprinted and cleared by New York State prior to being hired as a teacher in 2000.

In September 2012, Johnson and the district entered into a stipulation of settlement of the disciplinary proceeding, in which they agreed he would be suspended without pay until Feb. 1, 2013, according to the complaint. In the stipulation, he agreed to resign immmediately without a hearing if convicted of a felony in the then-pending criminal case and the district reserved the right to proceed with a second disciplinary hearing if he was not convicted of a felony, the complaint states.

He was restored to the district’s payroll on Feb. 1, 2013 and was again administratively reassigned to his home, the complaint says. He was “restricted from entering upon district property.”

After his guilty plea to the misdemeanor DWI charge in November 2013, the district on Dec. 10, 2013, brought a second set of disciplinary charges against Johnson, the complaint says, alleging misconduct in driving while intoxicated and possession of a loaded firearm — which Johnson says he had always denied. The gun, according to the complaint, belonged to an acquaintance of one of his friends and he was unaware she had put the gun in his glove compartment during a trip to Ohio to visit a sick friend. The district charged him with “conduct incompatible with the standards required to be seen as a positive role model for students,” the complaint says.

The complaint accuses Carney of telling the board of education that Johnson had admitted the weapon was his, which he denies, and says that statement was “a significant factor” in the board’s decision to seek termination of his employment.

No other school district employee had been brought up on disciplinary charges for DWI and district staff were never apprised of what the district’s expectations were and what the consequences would be for any violation of policy, Johnson says, though there have been “numerous district employees who were intoxicated on the job but were never disciplined,” he alleges— in addition to people who had off-duty DWIs who were never disciplined.

Two weeks after the district instituted the disciplinary action, on Dec. 24, 2013, Johnson filed a race discrimination complaint with the N.Y. State Human Rights Division and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Shortly afterward, in January 2014, Carney ordered him to report to work in a portable outside the middle school— where, according to the complaint, he was forced to spend each work day in isolation, in a building that lacked bathroom facilities, a water source, adequate heat and ventilation, and had no telephone. He was supposed to receive work assignments from and supervision by assistant superintendent David Wicks, the complaint states. But Wicks did not provide him with regular work assignments or the resources needed to complete the assignments that were given.

Johnson was told to use the bathroom in a nearby construction trailer. Sharing the bathroom with construction workers was “dehumanizing and uncomfortable,” he complained to Wicks, according to the suit. He asked to use a the bathroom in a portable used by staff, but was denied, he says.

Johnson says his assignment to the portable — a hostile work environment — was retaliation for his filing the discrimination complaint.

A hearing officer found in favor of the district in the disciplinary hearing and Johnson’s employment by the district was purportedly terminated, though the complaint says the plaintiff was not notified of the termination and was not aware of a board resolution being adopted ending his employment. It also claims the district failed to fulfill its responsibilities under the COBRA statute regarding notification of his rights to continue his health insurance coverage.

Johnson’s federal lawsuit was first reported by the News-Review on Friday.

Top photo caption: Joe Johnson leaves Suffolk County Criminal Court with his attorney, John Ciarelli, after his arraignment on DWI and weapons possession charges in May 2012. (Photo: Emil Breitenbach Jr.)