MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state education licensing board inappropriately denied a teaching license "for immoral character or conduct" to the ex-police officer who killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop.
In its 21-page decision, the appeals court ruled that the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board's basis for denying Jeronimo Yanez a teaching license "must relate to professional morals in the occupation of teaching and indicate that an individual is unfit to teach." Chief Judge Susan L. Segal wrote in the decision that the board must reconsider Yanez's application from Feb. 2020, when he applied for a three-year short-call substitute teaching license. At the time, he had a part-time position teaching Spanish at a private parochial school.
However, the appeals court stopped short of instructing the board to grant Yanez his license, directing them only to more narrowly define "immoral character or conduct" within the moral standards of teaching.
