An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered two Missouri teachers opposing a school district's mandatory diversity training to shell out over $300,000 in legal fees.
Teachers opposed the training that allegedly contained content forcing them to place themselves on an "oppression matrix." The material also allegedly called for socio-economic changes and asked teachers to share information they wished to keep private.
Brooke Henderson was one of the two fighting back against the training she said encouraged her to believe that America is systemically racist.
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"If we believed in a colorblind America, [it told us] that we are White supremacists, and it really just felt like there was no hope and that the wheels had come off the bus of what our job as educators was."
Henderson, who said she has taught for over 20 years, said the training was district-wide, impacting employees ranging from bus drivers to cafeteria workers, custodial crew members, teachers and everyone else employed in the district.
Federal district judge Douglas Harpool, who presided over the case, awarded $313,000 in attorney fees to the school district, arguing the district deserved to be compensated for being forced to defend against the case.
"It's absolutely excessive," said Southeastern Legal Foundation [SLF] General Counsel Kimberly Hermann, who represented the plaintiffs.
"The point of it is to chill speech. This is a First Amendment case in the first place where our clients were required to attest and affirm to ideas they just simply don't believe in. They believe that America should be colorblind. They believe that they should not have to look at the color of the student's skin, and that's all that they were fighting for."
The plaintiffs, according to Hermann, sought only $1 in damages and were instead solely focused on getting a judge to declare the training unconstitutional.
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Hermann lambasted the judge's decision as "absolutely unprecedented" and argued the ruling served to discourage parents or teachers from bringing a lawsuit in the future.
Henderson told Fox News' Ashley Strohmier that the ordeal violated her constitutional rights by forcing her to abide by training content and silencing her own opinion in the process.
She added that the training required her to locate herself on the "oppression matrix," and she automatically fell into the "racist" category as a White woman.
Henderson ultimately completed the training and said she is "very blessed" to still have her job despite the ordeal. She and fellow educator Jennifer Lumley have appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Fox News' Joshua Nelson contributed to this report.
