A Muslim civil rights organization has filed a complaint against Montgomery County Public Schools claiming the school system discriminated against a Muslim Arab middle school teacher after her email signature showed support for Palestinians.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced Friday it filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against MCPS on behalf of Hajur El-Haggan, a teacher at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring.
According to CAIR, El-Haggan was put on administrative leave because her email signature tagline expressed support for Palestinians.
CAIR said the school district informed El-Haggan that including political or non-political quotes in an email signature was against the employee code of conduct.
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"Although El-Haggan’s colleagues all had similar speech in their email signatures, she was the only teacher MCPS reprimanded," CAIR said in a news release about the complaint.
More than 30 people gathered near the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education in Rockville Friday morning to show support for El-Haggan.
“We want our teachers be in a position where any policy that the county decides to enforce is enforced equally or they are given the opportunity to talk, to mediate," CAIR attorney Rawda Fawaz said. "Ms. El-Haggan was treated extremely differently from her fellow teachers for engaging in conduct that they also engaged in. This is a clear example of discrimination of desparate treatment and that’s at the core of our filing.”
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“I’m just desperate to get back into the classroom with my students. As a teacher, that’s all any educator wants to do is just to be with her students. I miss my classroom. I miss my coworkers and I miss the kids," El-Haggan said.
News4 has reached out to MCPS about the complaint, but has not yet heard back.
