A New Hampshire teacher who came under scrutiny for taking an 18-year-old student to get an abortion during school hours is no longer suing the state over its response to the incident.
The lawsuit alleged that the department prematurely revoked the teacher’s credentials and violated her privacy when releasing records about the incident to the media.
The teacher’s identity is shielded in court documents, though the lawsuit indicated that she lives in Troy and, at the time of the incident, taught reading “at a private educational institution.”
The decision to drop the lawsuit comes several weeks after the state agreed to reinstate her credentials. An attorney representing the teacher said the state is now following the appropriate procedures to review the allegations, and the parties agree that the lawsuit should be dismissed.
When she first brought the lawsuit forward, the teacher also alleged that Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut distorted the facts of the case in an April op-ed, which he wrote in response to an NHPR investigation about how his agency wields its investigative authority. In the piece, Edelblut asked how the agency should respond to a range of concerns brought to its attention, including one suggesting a teacher “lie[d] by calling in sick so they can take a student – without parental knowledge – to get an abortion.”
In her lawsuit, the teacher said the commissioner’s reference to “parental knowledge” implied that the student in question was a minor.
“This was false and the Department — and by extension, Edelblut — knew that Student A was an adult months before Edelblut made the statement,” the lawsuit read.
