The Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to hear the case of fired Cobb County School District teacher Katie Rinderle, who was dismissed for introducing controversial gender ideology into her fifth-grade classroom. The court’s decision grants Rinderle ten days to file her appeal.
In 2023, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale and the Cobb County Board of Education terminated Rinderle after she read “My Shadow Is Purple” to her students. This picture book promotes the notion that gender exists on a spectrum, challenging traditional male and female distinctions.
The termination was upheld by both the Georgia State Board of Education and Cobb County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Childs. Judge Childs determined that Rinderle violated district policies by using supplementary materials containing sensitive content without prior approval and by addressing controversial issues in a manner that could infringe upon parents’ rights to guide their children’s moral and religious upbringing.
Katie Rinderle‘s legal representation includes attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization known for its consistent legal actions against school districts, including Cobb County.
In February 2024, the SPLC filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination against educators in the Cobb County School District. Additionally, in December 2023, the SPLC secured a preliminary injunction against Cobb County’s school board map, with the court ruling that the map was racially gerrymandered.
Furthermore, in December 2022, the SPLC was involved in a case where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision, allowing students with disabilities to seek accommodations from the Cobb County School District during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond her personal lawsuit that questions the right of the school district to fire teachers who flagrantly refuses to follow school policy, Rinderle is also involved in another lawsuit represented by the SPLC. Ms. Rinderle is ALSO represented in the case by the SPLC lawyer, Michael J. Tafelski.
The Cobb County School District maintains that Rinderle’s dismissal was both lawful and necessary, emphasizing their commitment to adhering to legal standards and focusing on traditional teaching and learning in the classroom.
A quick review of the SPLC use of the courts to impose their word-view on local communities quickly shows this left-wing group has pursued legal action against various school districts nationwide.
According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, In the mid-1980s, the SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear mongering, money-raising machine, resulting in the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985. https://adflegal.org/setting-the-record-straight/
SPLC’s Senior Fellow Mark Potok, former editor-in-chief of SPLC’s Intelligence Report, said: “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” SPLC has never renounced this statement.
In an article titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Everything that’s Wrong with Liberalism,” Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, carefully scrutinized SPLC’s “Hate Map” and concluded that it is an “outright fraud” and “a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC.” And former SPLC employee Bob Moser wrote that “it was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.”
Related Video – John Stossel Investigates: The Southern Poverty Law Center Scam
Timeline of a few high-profile court cases the SPLC has been involved with in the last few years in Cobb County
2023: Cobb County Board of Education terminated Rinderle after she read My Shadow Is Purple to her students. This picture book promotes the notion that gender exists on a spectrum, challenging traditional male and female distinctions.
August 2023: The termination was upheld by both the Georgia State Board of Education and Cobb County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Childs. Judge Childs determined that Rinderle violated district policies by using supplementary materials containing sensitive content without prior approval and by addressing controversial issues in a manner that could infringe upon parents’ rights to guide their children’s moral and religious upbringing.
February 2024: The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination against educators in the Cobb County School District.
December 2023: The SPLC secured a preliminary injunction against Cobb County’s school board map, with the court ruling that the map was racially gerrymandered.
December 2022: The SPLC was involved in a case where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision, allowing students with disabilities to seek accommodations from the Cobb County School District during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond Georgia, the SPLC has pursued legal action against various school districts nationwide.
October 2020: The SPLC filed lawsuits against the Pike County Board of Education in Alabama.
June 2023: The SPLC, in collaboration with the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, sued the St. Bernard Parish School District in Louisiana
