mobanmarketMONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD — A Montgomery County Public Schools teacher who was suspended three weeks ago for including a message in her email signature expressing support for Palestinians has filed a discrimination complaint against the school system with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The teacher’s suspension is part of a pattern over the past two months in Montgomery County, where school and county officials are targeting teachers and organizations that express views in solidarity with Palestinians and critical of Israeli policies and actions, critics said.
The suspended teacher, Hajur El-Haggan, who teaches at Argyle Middle School and has taught in the MCPS system for nearly 10 years, said many of her colleagues have similar speech in their email signatures, but that she was the only teacher singled out for reprimand by MCPS.
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At a news conference outside MCPS headquarters in Rockville on Friday, El-Haggan blamed Montgomery County school leaders, not her colleagues at Argyle Middle School, for her suspension. She said her school and co-workers have been “so incredibly supportive” since she was informed of her suspension.
The goal of the EEOC complaint, according to a lawyer representing El-Haggan, is to get her reinstated and back in the classroom and to ensure that all educators are treated equally and in accordance with policy.
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El-Haggan, an Arab Muslim, had the “from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free” slogan in her email signature. The slogan is viewed by many as a call for freedom and an end to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
But many Jews in the U.S. and Jewish leaders said the phrase is antisemitic because it calls for the establishment of a State of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, erasing the State of Israel and its people, the American Jewish Committee said.
On Nov. 20, El-Haggan was put on immediate administrative leave. “The reason I was given was because I had ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in my email signature,” she said.
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School officials told El-Haggan that quotes are not allowed in email signatures, especially those of a political nature. El-Haggan said she offered to remove the slogan from her email signature. But the county denied the offer and said her suspension would remain in effect.
“My goal in filing this complaint with the EEOC is to ensure Montgomery County treats all of its employees fairly,” El-Haggan said. “No one should be punished because a system or a person doesn’t like what someone looks like or stands for.”
She wants MCPS to practice what it preaches about being an “anti-racist, restorative justice” school system.
“I’m asking the county to take steps to ensure that Arab and Muslim educators like myself are protected from discrimination,” she said.
At the news conference, Rawda Fawaz, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s (CAIR) legal defense fund, said MCPS forced El-Haggan onto administrative leave “for engaging in conduct that non-Muslim, non-Arab county employees engage in.”
“Ms. Haggan’s choice to include a political, social justice slogan in her email signature was not unique,” Fawaz said. “Many of her colleagues in the county generally and at Argyle Middle School specifically have long had various popular political and social justice-related quotes and links in their email signatures. This was never a problem until Ms. El-Haggan, a visibly Muslim Arab woman, decided to participate in this conduct and express her support for basic Palestinian rights and dignity.”
“It is clear that Ms. El-Haggan was treated very different from her non-Muslim, non-Arab colleagues who engage in the same conduct,” she said. “This disparate treatment is at the core of our EEOC claim.”
Federal and state laws make it illegal for an employer to discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin or religion.
The laws include “disparate treatment discrimination, which Montgomery County engaged in when they chose to put Ms. El-Haggan on administrative leave,” Fawaz added.
El-Haggan was also “disparately treated” by MCPS because she was not given the opportunity to participate in any of the so-called restorative justice steps to approaching conflict “that the county prides itself on,” the lawyer said.
“In fact, many of Ms. El-Haggan’s friends, who are also employed by the county, were shocked to hear about the county’s approach, as it is so different from the standard and in direct opposition to the county’s restorative justice policies,” Fawaz said.
The way that El-Haggan was treated is “in direct violation of Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act] and the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act,” she argued.
When asked for comment about El-Haggan’s complaint against the school system, MCPS spokesman Christopher Cram said, “This is a personnel matter currently under investigation.”
There have been no reports of MCPS employees getting reprimanded for supporting Israel over the past two months.
“We’ve received many concerns about one-sided positions, statements, even classroom lessons and discussions favoring Israel without consequences that we’re of,” Zainab Chaudry, director of CAIR’s Maryland office, said in an email to Patch. “There’s a clear double standard within the school system.”
At Friday’s news conference, Evie Frankl, representing Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish activist group, asked why support for Palestinian lives is “more controversial than support for Black lives, Jewish lives, women’s lives — so controversial, so dangerous that it requires such indiscriminate but discriminating hurt to be inflicted.”
A side effect of the war on Gaza is that “an atmosphere of fear has been created,” Frankl said.
“MCPS has a reputation as an excellent liberal school system, but what is MCPS teaching through this thoughtless acting out against a group of teachers expressing one specific view,” she said.
CAIR’s Maryland office said it has been notified of at least three cases, including El Haggan’s, where MCPS educators have been placed on administrative leave in recent weeks after expressing support for Palestine.
“We are very concerned about McCarthyistic attempts to punish and silence MCPS employees based on their viewpoints,” Chaudry said.
“Protecting First Amendment free speech rights is integral to a just and democratic society. Upholding these rights ensures that all individuals have the opportunity to challenge injustices and contribute to the marketplace of ideas without censorship or retaliation,” she said. “It is imperative that our educational institutions safeguard these foundational liberties to promote a society where diverse voices can be heard and respected.”
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