From Judge Christopher Cooper's opinion Tuesday in Johnson v. Georgetown Univ. (D.D.C.):
Plaintiff Aneesa Johnson, an African American and Muslim woman of Palestinian origin, alleges that Georgetown discriminated against her when it fired her [from her position as Assistant Director of Academic and Faculty Affairs at Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service] after discovering eight-year-old social media posts that described her "hat[red]" for Zionists.
{Three of Johnson's posts are relevant here. The first read, "Ever since going to [Northwestern] I have a deep seeded [sic] hate for Zio bitches. They bring out the worst in me." The second elaborated, "You know why I call them Zio bitches, because they're dogs." And the third post was a repost of another user's Tweet, which included a photograph of a scowling Orthodox Jewish man with the caption, "When the whole world hates you bc you a thief and grow up looking like a shaytan #GrowingUpIsraeli." ("Shaytan" means devil or demon in Arabic.)}
She also brings a bevy of related hostile work environment, retaliation, and tort claims against Georgetown and a constellation of other defendants, including Rachel Jessica Wolff and Ilya Shapiro, individuals who publicized Johnson's old posts on Twitter; Canary Mission, a controversial organization that creates online profiles of students and professors on college campuses who have been critical of Israel; and a handful of Canary Mission's donors….
Upon consideration of the voluminous set of briefs in this case, the Court concludes that Ms. Johnson's claims against the movants must be dismissed with prejudice. Among myriad grounds for dismissal, the complaint does not make out any claim that Johnson was discriminated against based on her race, religion, or national origin, nor can she proceed in tort against Georgetown or other defendants due to procedural and substantive defects in her claims….
The opinion is over 20K words long, and I can't do it justice here. But I thought I'd pass along this passage, which is relevant to some of the First Amendment / tort law discussions we've had on this blog in past years:
