Prior Lake teacher sues district after suspension for private Facebook post about deporting families

A Prior Lake teacher has sued her school district in federal court for disciplining her over an immigration-related social media post, alleging that her constitutional rights were violated.

Brooke Zahn, who teaches fourth grade at Jeffers Pond Elementary School in the Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools district, says in her lawsuit that she was punished because of her personal use of social media. She had reshared an image in December 2024 advocating the deportation of families with mixed immigration status to their native countries.

Zahn had been disciplined in 2021 for anti-masking posts made during the COVID-19 pandemic, an episode that is also part of her lawsuit.

“I love my job as a teacher, and I am proud of my right to free speech,” Zahn said in a news release Aug. 22, the week she filed the suit. “The district’s decision to punish me for my private opinions was wrong.

“I am standing up for my rights as a citizen and to ensure this doesn’t happen to other teachers.”

In an email to the Sahan Journal, district officials declined to comment on pending litigation. Zahn did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year, Zahn sent a letter to the district threatening to sue if it did not give her back pay for her suspension in December, issue a formal apology and rescind the disciplinary action against her.

Seaton said he’s “very confident” that Zahn’s lawsuit will succeed. He cited a 2022 lawsuit his law firm won representing a group of parents and students who sued Lakeville Area Schools over teachers displaying “Black Lives Matter” posters in class. The district paid the law firm $30,000 last spring to settle the suit, and teachers took down the posters.

Zahn is seeking monetary relief for lost wages during her suspension and the time she spent taking a cultural competency training class as part of her 2024 discipline. She also wants the district to remove the 2021 and 2024 disciplinary letters from her personnel file.

“The school district doesn’t have a right to approve or disapprove of her private speech as a citizen,” Seaton said of Zahn’s case.

Zahn was hired to teach at Jeffers Pond in 2016. She earned her teaching certification at the University of Minnesota and previously taught in Ohio, Massachusetts and Texas.

The district suspended her without pay for seven days in December and ordered her to take the cultural competency class after she reshared an image in a private Facebook group of a cartoon family with the words, “A FAMILY THAT IS DEPORTED TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER.”

About two dozen emails to the school district raised concerns about the post, but Zahn said they did not come from parents of children in her class.

The lawsuit says district officials emailed families in December about the post, which brought it more attention, and that they expressed “disapproval” of Zahn’s “outside-of-work comments.”

Zahn “felt the need” to remove herself from school committees and eat lunch in her classroom after she returned from her suspension, according to the suit.

The district’s disciplinary letter for the December post said it caused “significant educational disruption across the district.” Some parents asked to have their children taken out of Zahn’s class, or to not have them placed in her class in the future, according to the letter.

The letter also referred to two previous violations by Zahn of the district’s social media policy.

“I will not be covering my face, I will not require my kids to, and if others will take a stand and do the same, we will be an army that puts an end to this nonsensical battle,” she wrote in one post, according to the district’s 2021 disciplinary letter.

She was ordered to review district policies, not engage in retaliation and to refrain from similar conduct in the future. She was also suspended for four days without pay that year for refusing to require her students to wear masks.

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