(Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
Savannah Law School may be closing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have other issues to deal with.
The law school was hit with a lawsuit last Friday, filed by former professor Maggie Tsavaris, age 60, in the Southern District of Georgia. The complaint alleges 11 claims against Savannah Law, including violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, age discrimination, sex discrimination, breach of contract, and defamation.
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According to the complaint, Tsavaris says she was fired from her tenure-track position at the school to make way for younger teachers. As reported by Law.com, the complaint alleges Dean Malcom Morris used a single classroom visit and student evaluations as a pretext to terminate Tsavaris — the oldest woman on faculty in 2017 when she was fired:
Morris allegedly visited her class on one occasion to observe and told Tsavaris that it was too lecture-heavy and was not interactive enough. Morris also cited allegedly low student evaluations in her termination, though Tsavaris claims that several younger faculty members with lower student reviews were allowed to keep their jobs.
“Defendant Morris singled out Ms. Tsavaris, an age-protected, disabled, white female professor, before she could apply for the tenure for which she worked very hard, for termination for pretextual reasons that her teaching was not up to par and her student evaluations were purportedly confirmation of that,” reads the complaint.
Tsavaris described the devastating impacts of the alleged discrimination:
“I’ve never felt discrimination before,” Tsavaris said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s the most crushing, demoralizing sensation ever, and it’s the 21st century and it’s a law school? It has just been awful.”
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The law school has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).