A longtime Beverly Hills High School history teacher says a Facebook post criticizing Trump supporters got her pulled from a substitute assignment in November 2024 — and nearly two years later, she's taking the district to court over it. Joanie Garratt filed a lawsuit against the Beverly Hills Unified School District in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday, alleging the district violated her First Amendment rights and California labor law by terminating her over the post.
Garratt had started a monthlong substitute-teaching assignment at Beverly Hills High School in November 2024, brought in specifically to prepare students for the AP U.S. History exam, according to the Los Angeles Times. Six days into that assignment, on November 6, 2024, a pro-Trump rally took place on campus, with participants wearing Make America Great Again t-shirts and hats and carrying at least two Trump cardboard cutouts. Garratt's lawsuit alleges that rally participants harassed Black Student Union members that day.
The following day, Garratt — who is Jewish — posted on her personal Facebook page outside school hours, writing that pro-Trump students had harassed and intimidated non-MAGA students and targeted the Black Student Union classroom. In that same post, she wrote that she was ashamed to be an American and that Trump supporters worship a fascist, while also stating that Trump, rather than the school administration, was to blame for the students' behavior: “don't blame the administration for this... This comes from their leader, His Majesty, King Trump,” she wrote, according to the Beverly Press.
A Phone Call and an Email Ended Her Assignment
According to the lawsuit, district administrator Matthew Horvath emailed Garratt on November 13, 2024, referencing her Facebook post and asking to meet the following day. Garratt says Horvath then told her the school did not want her back in the classroom because of the post. She was removed from her substitute assignment that same month, and the Times reports she has since confirmed by email that she believes she was fired because of her Facebook posts.
Around a dozen Black students later raised concerns about harassment, intimidation and racial slurs at a Board of Trustees meeting, per the district timeline cited in the lawsuit. Bella Ivory, a teacher and administrator of the Black Student Union, is named in connection with the incident as well. District official Drew Stewart sent families a message at the time saying the school would protect students' free speech while limiting large-group gatherings on campus.
Garratt's attorney, V. James DeSimone, said Garratt was a beloved, trusted teacher and that students lost out because another substitute who was not a history teacher replaced her. Garratt has said she loved her 30 years with the district. Her lawsuit alleges the district violated the California Labor Code, which under Sections 1101 and 1102 bars employers from making rules that control employees' political activities or threatening discharge to influence how an employee votes or speaks politically, according to Littler Mendelson.
District Says She Was Never Fired
The district's position, laid out when Garratt first filed a formal administrative claim in December 2024, is starkly different from her account. BHUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Bregy publicly denied that Garratt was terminated at all, stating she had retired years earlier and remained on the substitute teacher list without any official dismissal action taken, according to FOX 11 Los Angeles. That December claim sought at least $50,000 in damages and reinstatement, a required administrative step under California Government Code Section 911.2 before a public employee can sue a school district in court. In its current form, Garratt's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. BHUSD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new lawsuit, per the Times.
Garratt's academic background lends context to her role and her commentary. She earned a Master's degree in Government from Harvard University in 1979 after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA, and she served over 40 years as an educator in BHUSD, including as faculty facilitator for the high school's Interact Club, according to the Beverly Hills Courier. She has posted publicly that she was dismissed from her position and stood with teachers persecuted for expressing their views in public forums.
Legal Standard for Public School Speech
Under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1968 ruling in *Pickering v. Board of Education*, public school teachers retain First Amendment protections to comment on matters of public concern as long as their speech doesn't impair workplace discipline or harmony, according to the First Amendment Encyclopedia. BHUSD school board policy itself states that employees' personal political beliefs and activities shall not be grounds for disciplinary action if they don't violate law or policy, a provision that could bear directly on Garratt's claims.
The case unfolds against a backdrop that makes it politically pointed: Beverly Hills was one of the relatively few municipalities in Los Angeles County where Donald Trump won a majority in the November 2024 election, taking 8,968 votes to Kamala Harris's 8,123 votes, according to the California Secretary of State. The campus rally and its aftermath have already spawned other legal fights — Hoodline previously reported that a judge let stand a defamation suit filed by former BHUSD safety chief Mark Mead against a journalism teacher, stemming from the same post-election campus incident.
Garratt's case also arrives amid a separate, unrelated dispute playing out at another California campus: the Cal State faculty union ruled in 2026 that a San José State University professor terminated in 2024 after participating in Gaza war-related campus protests must be reinstated as a tenured professor. Whether Garratt's claims will similarly hold up in court remains to be seen, with the district maintaining she was never formally terminated in the first place.
