ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 24, 1996 TAG: 9607240043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
LARI SCRUGGS had sued two women, who she said tried to ruin her career because of her advice.
A former Franklin County High School teacher who lost her job over racial comments she made to students dropped her lawsuit against two women after they apologized in writing.
Lari Scruggs had sued a fellow teacher and the head of the county's NAACP chapter, alleging that they conspired to punish her for her comments on interracial dating by destroying her career.
In a statement filed in federal court in Roanoke Tuesday, former teacher Nadine Keen and civil rights activist Linda Edwards-White said they never intended to harm Scruggs, only "to call attention to the failure of the Franklin County School Board to appropriately address certain race-related issues" at the high school.
Comments made by Scruggs, who is white, to two white teen-agers set off a controversy that led to threats and rumors of a student riot, which never happened.
The incident occurred in February 1993, when two students asked Scruggs, while she was monitoring study hall, about an upcoming Black History Month program and what she thought about whites dating blacks. The students relayed the conversation to Keen, who complained to the principal that Scruggs referred to the history program as a "nigger" program and lectured the two white girls against dating black boys.
Scruggs has denied using the epithet and said she told the girls that interracial dating leads to personal problems, citing examples at the school.
The two women she sued brought the matter to the administration's attention, talked to the media and tried to get the state to investigate. Besides them, Scruggs sued the school board, school administrators and the two students. The other parties had all been dismissed previously from the $2 million suit.
Keen and Edwards-White twice asked Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser to rule in their favor before trial, and twice he denied their motions.
Kiser said there was sufficient evidence that the two black women may have conspired in a "maliciously discriminatory" manner toward Scruggs because of her race. Federal law that protects blacks from being deprived of their rights because of race also applies to whites who are conspired against by blacks, Kiser wrote in December.
Last week, he dismissed the two women's arguments that they could not be sued for conspiracy because they are private citizens and not "state actors."
"My December ruling that defendants could reasonably be found to have hounded state officials to impose further punishment on [Scruggs] for her exercise of free speech remains in effect," Kiser wrote. "I herein underscore my conclusion that defendants' efforts attempting to influence the activity of the state are sufficient to maintain a claim" that Scruggs' First Amendment rights were infringed on.
It was after that ruling that the two sides settled the case out of court.
Kiser had ruled earlier that interracial dating was a hot topic at Franklin County High School and that Scruggs had a First Amendment right to answer a question posed by a student on a "matter of public concern."
Scruggs resigned after she was told that her contract would not be renewed. Keen also resigned at the end of the 1993 school year.
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