MARTINSVILLE – A former Martinsville High School principal is suing the city, city council and the city’s school board, claiming reverse discrimination as a result of a demotion last year.

Angela Weinerth and her attorney Glen F. Koontz, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Danville, seeking a jury trial and at least $8 million in punitive damages, $105,000 in back pay and benefits, $445,000 in prospective pay and benefits and $1 million in “non-economic damages,” as well as unspecified sums in “pre-judgment interest,” attorney fees and costs and any other compensation that the court might deem appropriate.

The city is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as is current Martinsville Schools Superintendent Zeb Talley; the school board, board members Joan Montgomery and Eric Hruza and former members Lawrence Mitchell and Victor Correa; the city council; council members Jennifer Bowles, Sharon Hodge and Gene Teague as well as former members Danny Turner and Mark Stroud. The suit indicates those officials were in office at the time when events described within it occurred.

Weinerth, 63 and white, currently serves as assistant principal at Martinsville Middle School. She previously was an assistant principal at Martinsville High, serving under Principal Aji Dixon, who is black. When Dixon was reassigned to the Central Office in 2013, Weinerth was named principal and served in that role until 2016. At that point, she was assigned to the middle school and Dixon was brought back as principal.

A look at Virginia employment law defines reverse discrimination as “discrimination in favor of a majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.”

The lawsuit alleges that the city – through the council and the school board, which is appointed by the council – “instituted a policy to employ administrators and educators in its public schools system on the basis of race, sex and age, for the explicit purpose of having those administrators and education ‘look’ like the racial and sexual composition of the students.”

“The implementation of this policy served to unlawfully discriminate against administrators and educators who did not ‘look’ like the racial, sexual and age composition of the students,” including Weinerth, the suit maintains.

In her lawsuit, Weinerth claims the defendants violated federal law by demoting her. The lawsuit states that Weinerth filed charges of discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then the U.S. Department of Justice provided her a “notice of right to sue.”

According to the suit, when Weinerth was assistant principal at MHS, she tried to alert Dixon to data indicating that students at the school were falling behind under state learning standards, as well as to possible consequences to students and the school if no performance improvements occurred.

Weinerth then claims Dixon told her to “back off,” the suit states.

Later in that same school year, the lawsuit claims Weinerth told Dixon that MHS was risking its accreditation and the state board of education could possibly intervene.

“Principal Dixon (then) called Angela Weinerth a ‘bulldog’ and lunged over his desk at her, physically threatening her,” the suit asserts.

Coincidentally, the mascot of the high school’s student body and athletic teams is a bulldog.

When Dixon was reassigned to the Central Office in 2013, Weinerth then was named principal of the school, the suit states, adding that upon getting the job, she took steps to reverse what she saw as the “failing policies of neglect, and to address the academic needs of the students.”

“Better relationships with administrators, teachers and students ensued, as each were made to understand the need for their participation in the schools’ programs in order to ensure their ultimate success,” the suit claims. In addition, “discipline among students improved, and steps were taken to provide more particularized instruction, based on student needs” and “steady progress was made by MHS toward achieving accreditation by the Commonwealth’s Education Board.”

Making a change

After former Superintendent Pam Heath retired in the summer of 2016, Talley was named interim superintendent and “began instituting a personnel policy based upon race, sex and age,” the suit claims.

The suit points out that:

• More than 50 percent of students in the Martinsville schools are minorities,
• More than 70 percent of students at MHS are minorities, and
• More than 50 percent of students at the high school are male.

Talley had expressed concerns that more than 70 percent of the system’s employees were white, the suit claims.

“It was the expressed belief of the School Board and Dr. Talley that a ‘more diverse staff’ was necessary for student success,” the suit claims. “By ‘diverse’ the School Board and Dr. Talley were referring to a human’s immutable characteristics such as race and sex.”

The lawsuit mentions statements allegedly made by Talley and Correa that Weinerth and her attorney believe back up that notion. It states that no council members denounced or questioned those statements and “by their silence, and by virtue of their subsequent actions,” the council and the school board “adopted and ratified those statements and that personnel policy in the public schools system.”

In a phone call on July 22, 2016, the lawsuit claims, Talley asked Weinerth how many black teachers worked at MHS. Weinerth responded that “she did not know off the top of her head” yet she did not hire teachers based upon race or sex but rather “based upon their ability to perform their jobs.”

Employment applications at the high school did not ask applicants to give their race or sex, the lawsuit mentions.

In response to Weinerth’s answers to his questions, Talley told her to count the number of teachers at MHS by race and report back to him, the lawsuit states.

Four days later, the lawsuit states, Talley told Weinerth that he was going to demote her to assistant principal at the middle school. When she asked why, the lawsuit claims that Talley replied “the community had spoken.”

According to the suit, Weinerth then told Talley about “progress and strides that had occurred under her leadership.”

However, “Dr. Talley became angry and threatened to demote her further and to place her in a teaching position” at the middle school, the lawsuit maintains. It adds that Talley then made Dixon principal at MHS again and named Clarence Simington, who also is black, assistant principal there.

Talley demoted Weinerth, the lawsuit claims, “because she did not ‘look’ like the student body or the community at large,” as well as because he determined that “she was not qualified to be the principal of a public high school with a majority student body of young, black males.”

Weinerth claims in the lawsuit those actions constituted illegal discrimination under federal law. The lawsuit claims that Dixon was not qualified to be Martinsville High’s principal, because his “sole qualifications … are that he is a young, black male who ‘looks’ like the majority of the student body and the community at large.”

School board and council members voiced no oppositions to Talley’s actions, and the council voiced no opposition when the board promoted Talley to be superintendent on a permanent basis, the lawsuit states.

The city was not served with the suit until late Friday afternoon, according to City Attorney Eric Monday.

At that time, the city and the school division released a joint statement saying, “We are content to let a comparison of the record of Mavahi’s (Martinsville High School’s) performance during Ms. Weinerth’s tenure, and its performance since, speak for itself. We believe Ms. Weinerth’s case has no merit whatsoever and we look forward to seeing justice being done.”

The city, the statement continued, “sincerely regrets that Ms. Weinerth felt it necessary to file a lawsuit against her employer, the public school system. It is particularly regrettable, at this time of national discord over questions of race and discrimination, that she has wrongly chosen to place blame for her reassignment within the school system on race and bias.”

“It also is unfortunate that our community’s resources must be diverted to defending this baseless lawsuit rather than on the continued improvement of our schools,” the statement went on.

It concluded that “we are confident that the outcome of this case will provide assurance to our entire community that Martinsville City Schools does not judge people by the color of their skin.”

Monday said that city and schools officials will have no immediate further comment on the suit.

When reached by phone Friday night, though, Talley called the suit “totally unfounded.” He declined to comment further.

Weinerth could not be reached for comment.