Fired Spanish Fort magistrate alleges termination amounts to violation of First Amendment rights – FOX10 News

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) Going to court to challenge a firing is an uphill proposition in Alabama, where employers have broad latitude to hire and dismiss workers.

Spanish Forts former court magistrate, Lyndsey Cooper, is making a novel effort to overcome that hurdle. She has filed a lawsuit alleging that her dismissal following a criminal assault complaint she made against Mayor Mike McMillan amounts to a violation of her First Amendment rights.

Her attorney, Elizabeth Citrin, acknowledged that this is an unusual approach to an employment dispute.

It took a bit of research to figure out what type of claim and whether it would be filed in state or federal court, would apply to this particular set of circumstances, she said. There isnt another case like it, exactly, on point. Its unprecedented in terms of this particular set of facts because they are all fact-specific.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Mobile, seeks a court order declaring the citys actions to be a violation of Coopers constitutional rights. She also seeks back pay from the date of her termination, compensation for future lost earnings and reinstatement of her retirement benefits.

The civil complaint names the city of Spanish Fort, McMillan and Lynn Williams, who was the citys clerk-treasurer.

McMillan declined to answer questions about the lawsuit, but City Attorney David Conner told FOX10 News that the allegations are false.

The city plans to vigorously defend the litigation, he said.

The dispute dates to an incident in October 2019 when, according to Coopers allegations, the mayor assaulted her. The lawsuit contends that Cooper was upset that another city employee had deleted a website that she had been working on for five months.

McMillan, the complaint alleges, was trying to explain to Cooper what happened and swiped the computer monitor as if it were a touch-screen device. Cooper laughed at that, prompting McMillan to go into a fit of rage, according to the suit. Cooper accused the mayor of screaming at her to shut up and then slapping her across the face.

Cooper made a criminal complaint to the Baldwin County Sheriffs Office, which ultimately filed a misdemeanor harassment chargeagainst McMillan. But a judge ended up finding him not guilty after a trial in which a prosecutor played a surveillance video of the incident.

The lawsuit contends that city officials decided immediately to get rid of Cooper and alleges that Williams drafted a termination memo. Citrin said the memo was on a server that could be viewed by any city worker.

Rather than firing Cooper right away, Citrin said, the city took a series of steps to make her job miserable. The lawsuit contends city officials isolated her, effectively holding her hostage anytime the mayor was at City Hall and stripped her of her magistrate duties. At one point, the suit states, Williams ordered her to take on the duties of the receptionist.

Finally, according to the suit, the city singled Cooper out to conduct temperature checks of visitors to City Hall during the COVID-19 pandemic. She refused because she did not have the proper medical training and feared for her safety, and then the city moved to terminate her in June 2000, according to the suit.

They started a termination memo right after they got wind of her having reported the (slapping) incident to the Sheriffs Department and then realized that they better create a different reason for terminating her and spent the next eight months creating those reasons to give it a reason other than the violation of the First Amendment rights, Citrin said.

But Conner, the city attorney, told FOX10 News that Cooper was not the only employee asked to help with COVID protocols. He said the city supplied her with gloves and a thermometer to aim at people as they stood outside the door. He said such temperature checks were common measures conducted by many companies and government agencies.

What she was asked to do was what hundreds of thousands of other people are doing around this country every day, he said.

Conner acknowledged that there was a draft termination letter that predated the dispute over the temperature checks. But he said it was unrelated to her firing.

At some point in time, there was some discussion, he said. That was stopped. The letter was never even completed. No further action was taken pending a resolution of the criminal case and the investigation that was going on against the city. There was no action taken against her.

Conner also noted that Cooper had ample opportunity to press charges against McMillan in the criminal case and to appeal her termination.

Shes had due process at the city level. Shes also had due process at the state level, he said.

But Coopers lawsuit depicted that appeal process as a sham.

The appeal was a fiction, akin to a kangaroo court (that) was neither fair nor impartial, the suit states.

Citrin said prior to the alleged slap, there had been no bad blood between her client and the mayor and never any suggestion that she was not performing her job well.

Why it escalated to this point where we ended up where we are today is kind of beyond comprehension, she said.

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Fired Spanish Fort magistrate alleges termination amounts to violation of First Amendment rights - FOX10 News