A fired Atlantic City teacher's seven-year saga with the school district is not yet over.
Phillip Eisenstein is asking for a judge to reconsider his Conscientious Employee Protection Act case, which was dismissed during trial in April.
Eisenstein was fired in 2016 for breaking up a fight at New York Avenue School.
He said the fight involved a student who had been threatening the other, including saying he was going to bring a gun to school.
Eisenstein claimed he was really fired for asking why the student was allowed back in school the next day with no consequences.
But when he testified at trial in April, Eisenstein did not name a law, statute, rule, regulation or public policy on which to base his claim as required, the district's attorney successfully argued in April, bringing the trial to an end.
Eisenstein's attorney now argues that his client was following a school's top public policy: to keep children safe.
“There is a clear mandate of public policy to protect students at schools,” John Swift wrote in the May 9 filing obtained by BreakingAC. “Plaintiff was terminated shortly after complaining to the principal that the student was not disciplined after the student had threated to bring a gun to school.”
Putting the student back in school was against public policy to keep students safe, Swift claims.
Riley responded in filing submitted June 1, saying that the Supreme Court made that statement 20 years ago, meaning the plaintiff could have presented that at any time before the judge's determination.
Even if that were considered, Riley writes, the statement “it is simply too vague and generalized” to meet the criteria for a CEPA claim.
She also writes that the student was eventually given an in-school suspension as a result of the investigation into the threat.
"Plaintiff assumed that a threat to bring a gun to school would result in not only an in-school suspension but an immediate in-school suspension to be effective the very next day..." she wrote, bolding immediate. "Thus Eisenstein's complaint is more aptly characterized as an objection to the time of the punishment and/or pace of the investigation."
Riley also wrote that the pre-trial judge had Eisenstein on notice since Dec. 20, 2019, “that he would need to ultimately identify some law, statute, rule, regulation or public policy” on which to base the claim.
It is not yet clear if there will be an oral argument in the case.
