Principal in Holocaust Dispute Shouldn’t Have Been Fired, Judge Rules

The Palm Beach County, Florida, school board fired the principal, William Latson, after an email exchange with a parent about Holocaust education came to light.

By Johnny Diaz
Aug. 14, 2020, 3:38 p.m. ET

A high school principal in Florida who refused to say that the Holocaust was “a factual, historical event” because he had to stay “politically neutral” should not have been fired, a judge ruled on Thursday.

The principal, William Latson, was removed from his post at Spanish River Community High School in Boca Raton last year, after an April 2018 email exchange with a student’s parent became public. He should have been reprimanded or reassigned to another position at the Palm Beach County school board, according to Judge Robert S. Cohen of the Division of Administrative Hearings in Tallahassee, Fla.

The school district failed to prove that Mr. Latson had “engaged in misconduct in office, incompetence, or gross insubordination by a preponderance of the evidence,” the judge wrote in his order. “No just cause for his suspension or termination exists, but a reprimand and reassignment are warranted.”

The judge said that Mr. Latson had “communicated well with students, teachers, and parents, except for the one parent.” He said the principal’s “choice of words and methods of trying to express that everyone at S.R.H.S. has the right to their individual beliefs, even if they differed from the required, approved curriculum were unfortunate.”

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