was terminated from her job as a card teacher because of her relationship with her stepchildren who attended the school district where she taught and her stepdaughter was actually in the same building the children's biological mother mika king fought hard to keep miss hartwell away from her stepchildren ultimately resorting to harassing the school district into firing ms hardwell but for ms hartwell relationship with her stepchildren and the unfortunate position that it put the school district administration in miss hartill would not have been terminated from employment there's no this is doug sutton there is no evidence that she was fired because she had stepchildren all the evidence is that she was fired because what she did with respect to a stepchildren  but seems to be quite different the the picture that that the school district and defendant peterson painted certainly was that it was because of what she did with the step children but it i ms horrible position that that was kind of there was a created factual pattern to justify wanting to get rid of her because of the children and and continued harassment of them the for example the discipline that was given to ms hart well when we got to the deposition the principal but this one was severely undermined by the fact that the principal didn't have facts to support a lot of the reasons for the discipline let's let the let's focus on what i think is the key incident when risk pickup i guess is one of the stepchildren you know state law gave king the right have custody the child didn't give harwell no rights under state law so the question is what state law allows it's not punishing people because you're a step parent or not a step parent ching have the right to pick up the child will did not have the right to say no i don't i just don't understand how that conceivably has anything to do with the right to a family association into minnesota ca sion or anything else the the plaintiff in this case we've never contested that that ms hartwell may have been wrong in that situation that she didn't actually have the right to keep her stepdaughter it's uncontested that the principal gave her a directive to release the stepdaughter to missed her will didn't do it immediately and she violated that directive that there's no doubt about that that the question i think that's relevant is is that violation of that directive justification for terminations i would suggest that it's not and it wasn't the basis of the the reasoning for the termination when principle here you were the best you were in the earlier this is all pretext and i just don't understand why that's not a pretty valid justification if but because that was not the basis that the school district was not in the desert took as to why she's being terminated originally the principal said she's being terminated because of her performance evaluation and judge ludington at the trial court level found that there wasn't a lot of they weren't able to offer a lot of support for the reasoning behind the performance evaluation it wasn't until the principal peterson was further question that she said that she that it came out that she talked to the board about all the incidents with ms king harassing the school district and including the disciplined which involved that aspect and two other elements that were basically disproven at the at the deposition miserable was allegedly disciplined for finding out her stepdaughter and then having having a friend pick the stepdaughter up by the principal thought friend there was just another par is there any evidence that in the first year  the school or there were there was no incidents correct and she have the same relationship she was still married and she still had stepchildren right there were there were no incidents ms king did not start involving herself in the situation until the beginning of her second year why isn't it that they're firing her because of her conduct and not because of her defend the evidence that they're there firing her because of her associations is the circumstantial evidence surrounding the fact that her her first year of teaching she was you know on the right track everyone was saying that she was j p up to be a good teacher she had no discipline she had typical concerns of a first year teacher but nothing else and all of a sudden when ms king started calling and harassing the school district all of a sudden ms harwell was issued a to deal with it if they if they fire ms harwell because the hassle to deal with ms ms king calling them is that the correct i believe that that's a violation of her intimate association and school if it if it's affecting her job performance i mean if they're if they're terminating her because they don't like her parenting style but there's no tied to the job performance i think there's an argument that that would violate her right of intimate association the key here is not that ms king is as a stepmother i think isn't the element that's important here in the same way that in the little john case there was a random community member that made a complaint about the teacher's divorce and in the same way that the random community member didn't matter in that case it was the divorce that mattered in this case ms king doesn't matter it's the stepchildren that matter and that's why it falls under the intimate association protection but i mean i think what jenson button again but i think what judge the parts question shows is the firing is a much better explanation of the firing the king and hartwell didn't get along  king was creating hassles for the school district and maybe you're right that hard work should not have been fired maybe the reviews aren't enough but not a single one of those things says anything about this being punished because of a right to intimate association or family association that's what i that's the part of this case i'm just not getting it it's the the circumstantial evidence that shows a causal connection at  plans division is at least enough to survive a motion for summary judgment i think i've had quite a level you know that's where i'm coming from on this and maybe you can think about it for a bottle but where i'm coming from on this is you don't get to a jury because you show that the school districts explanation for the firing don't stand up you've got to do something that allows the inference that the firing was connected to family as well as the action and that's the part of this just completely missing for me but i think that there is evidence here that will that will show that the firing is related to the intimate association i think the fact that the the reason given was not really efficient justification is helpful but i think that there's frankly better evidence showing a connect the causal connection i think that a lot of it was disregarded at the trial court level i think that some of it was mentioned and then  not taken in light most favorable to the plaintiffs in included in that is the fact that almost all of the communication from king was not mentioned by the trial court including i think the most important communication from king which was the last district was being told she was being kept in the loop she had been told that hartwell had been issued discipline this wasn't even mentioned by the trial court and therefore the temporal proximity argument wasn't mentioned this was less than a month from this man you can keep going if you wish or you can keep your full five minutes your call just if i could just use another minute or two i would preach it sure another fact that was not taken by the trial court was  the the this disparate treatment of ms harwell the trial court recognized that there were several other teachers who had received the same or worse evaluations and did not have the intimate association issue and were not terminated but it was not taken in favor of the plaintiff there were also other issues that the trial court explicitly disregarded one of which and mention of the brief the court referred to as a sham argument because it didn't didn't see the connection between the deposition and affidavit which is i mean that's all laid out in the brief but the main point is there are there are big concerns that a lot of the circumstantial evidence including the temporal facsimile was just just either disregarded or not taken behalf of defendants a pole we use a whole community school district and amy peterson your honors i'm prepared to stand by briefing in the forty four page well reasoned opinion of the district court in this case unless your hon that this time you will to any questions that you may have ok i'm this is just that and i don't have any questions at this point judgment team do you have any questions no i don't have any for mr marker i might have some for ms hopper when she gets we're not looking here for whether disassociation was a reason for the employment action but rather are looking to see if if there's evidence that it was a substantial motivating reason yes i agree that part of the crime a facia case and sell it at the at a trial on the merits that would be what the plaintiff and alternately have to prove i would argue that for the purposes of the motion for summary plaintiff need not prove that but bring sufficient evidence that a reasonable jury could could find in her favor under that standard i guess what bothers me about that particularly when you when you make the argument that the school district says that the reason was the evaluations and her evaluations were about the same as some of the other provisionary teachers and they didn't get fired none of them had you  say none of them had this associational issue which is which i assume is true but would it also be true that none of them also had engaged in the conduct or actions arising out of that association that your client did that it's true that there's no evidence that there was that they engaged in those actions as well you know it almost seems like the first amendment being or the fourteenth the member depending on how we analyse analyze is almost being raised as a shield to justify improper conduct that would get somebody fired if they didn't have these associational rights and i think that might be what some of the earlier questions were alluding to that just doesn't that just doesn't seem to me that that could be the law so why am i wrong on that i certainly understand that concern and if if the plaintive had done well the concerns that were raised about the plaintiff's actions with regard to her stepchildren including the situation where the where ms king came to pick up the stepdaughter she received a piece of discipline for the discipline was put into an evaluation it lowered her evaluation score so was taken into consideration when she was given her evaluation then the number that she received in her evaluation was was still higher than other teachers who were not fired so even taking into consideration her actions where she w discipline for the purposes of the argument even assuming that they were justified it was taken into consideration and it still didn't bring her within the realm of what would be terminated as a side note here under michigan law did not have the opportunity to challenge the discipline in any way its teachers not allowed to challenge discipline so she had to take it as it was it was put in her evaluation and that's what lowered her evaluation score but it did not bring it into the realm where any other teacher was let go for that reason so it's not that it should be taken into consideration by the board it's that to argue that it was enough to justify the termination is just on supported by by the situations of all the other teachers so in this i mean i'm sorry about miss her well i know this are by the way i understand and i see what judge sutton said it seems it might be unfair but i guess the part of the thing i'm struggling with the maybe you can help me and i understand the circumstantial evidence point but is there any evidence after not even just involving mr harwell that this school board or these individuals have discriminated against someone because they're a step parent or because of a familial status because what it seems to me is you could have an asian teacher and they could engage in misconduct and then if there's  time and you say well that's just a smokescreen because you don't like asians that would be hard to prove and so how do you see where i'm struggling is there any evidence like i or i believe i go ahead i'm sorry i believe i understand what you're saying there is no evidence that the school district has discriminated against other step parents there's also no evidence that the school district has ever received the kind of harassment they were getting from ms king and there was evidence that the school district was taking steps to appease ms king to frankly get her off their backs from the very first time she contacted the school district defended peters and directed miss hartill not to have contact with her step kids just just to try to king to back off a little bit she miss king was also informed about the discipline that ms hartwell was receiving which is problematic under other under michigan laws but it was it was clear that the school district was taking steps to lessen the impact of the harassment of ms king and it just wasn't stopping so they eventually i guess saw that their path of least resistance or the or the clearest way to stop ms king from continually arresting i would just point out that the cases is very similar to the powered case from from this court where the plaintiff had a good record up until until the intimate association issue came up she was a good teacher it's uncontested that she didn't have performance issues that were different than any other new teacher she had no discipline and all of a sudden the her record started dipping proportionately with the last man that was being received from ms king which is uncontested th e harassment from ms king was told to the board during the conversation about why personal peterson was recommending her terminations from employment ok thank you thanks to both of you thanks for your breed thank you to everybody for accommodating other schedules including even this morning we appreciate it and the case will be submitted thank you very much thank you your honor you this telephone argument is now adjourned counsel we ask you to please disconnect at this time and thank you thank you amanda can you confirm i have disconnected yes ma'am they have both disconnected at time thank you your honor if you need to contact the operator in case you cannot hear one of your other colleagues remember to press starr's euro the operator can verify for you  that the judge is still on the other line or to have been disconnected and do you require anything further from me at this time i don't think so thanks so much for how thank you for making this work out this morning so