Central Bucks School District. Photo by James Short.
The wife of a Central Bucks School Board member and a separate plaintiff in a discrimination case against the district have 30 days to decide whether to continue their lawsuits.
According to The Bucks County Herald, as of Sept. 3, a judge ordered each to identify a male teacher whose employment equals theirs and who was paid more than them without a valid reason.
Dawn Marinello and Rebecca Cartee-Haring, whose husband, Rick Haring, is an elected member of the school board, were also ordered, per the report, to not use differences in pay from school psychologists, counselors and nurses, per the court.
Back in 2021, teacher and plaintiff Marinello gathered 368 current and former female teachers that worked at Central Bucks School District over the past 23 years, and collectively filed a $119 million civil lawsuit against the district, claiming they were owed more than $48 million in back pay due to the district historically paying the male teachers higher salaries.
Central Bucks was facing the possibility of paying out a maximum $119 million, especially if it violated the Equal Pay Act, per Bucks County Courier Times. The lawsuit, among other things, alleged male teachers were given credit for past experiences, but women were not.
However, Central Bucks persisted on. At the time of Marinello’s filing, the district was amid another civil lawsuit from English teacher Cartee-Haring, also claiming Equal Pay Act violations by the district, filed in 2020.
Back in May 2024, a federal judge pushed the district to settle the Marinello lawsuit before the case heads to jury trial, as there was substantial likelihood the teachers would win, per the report.
However, on July 29, the trial would end in a hung jury, per court records. Post-trial, a juror revealed the jury was split 6-2 in the women’s favor, per The Inquirer.
According to law, the case can be tried again in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, as no verdict was issued by a jury.
Per The Inquirer, Cartee-Harding’s case was tried separately, but a federal judge declared a mistrial.
According to the Herald, the court “decertified” the teachers’ class action case, which was then challenged and lost.
“It’s disappointing. I’m not necessarily disappointed in the jury — there were a lot of very complicated details,” said Cartee-Haring in the Inquirer earlier this summer. “They have a decades-long problem here, and it’s not going away.”
In November 2023, Democrats swept a number of Moms For Liberty conservatives off the school board, turning the school board blue.
Earlier this year, in March, Central Bucks settled a lawsuit with teacher Andrew Burgess, a teacher with 15 years at Central Bucks who was wrongfully suspended in May 2022 by the school district. Burgess, prompted by a transgender student and their family, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, according to the ACLU.
As part of the settlement, Central Bucks reinstated Burgess, compensated him with $100,000 in damages and covered his legal fees. The district also had to rectify false claims about Burgess in his personnel file, per the settlement.
The complaint centered on allegations that the district failed to address harassment faced by the transgender student by classmates, per the complaint. Thus, Burgess was suspended by the school board.
