It's the end of the road for the thousands of New Orleans public school employees who said they were wronged when they lost their jobs after Hurricane Katrina. They lost in Louisiana in October, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied their appeal Monday (May 18), according to court documents.Thousands of people totally screwed over. School system still more or less in chaos. Although it's a shiny new chaos still confusing enough that we get to pretend it is some kind of progress.
The Louisiana Supreme Court's decision against the plaintiffs was doubly negative -- most of the court's justices threw the case out, and said they would have ruled against the plaintiffs anyway -- and doubly surprising, because the teachers had won at trial in the appeals court. The trial judge awarded damages that could have totaled $1.5 billion.
About 7,500 teachers and staff were part of the suit. It charged that the Orleans Parish School Board did not follow proper procedures when it laid off almost its entire workforce after the 2005 storm. Moreover, plaintiffs said, the state Recovery School District, which took over most of the schools, should have given them priority in hiring.
Not sure what happens now. Check back in another ten years or after the next disaster, I guess. Whatever comes first.
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