A former Barnstable Public Schools administrator who was fired for his social media posts has sued the district, alleging officials unlawfully terminated him in violation of his First Amendment rights.
The right-wing legal group Judicial Watch filed the suit last week in US District Court in Boston on behalf of John Bergonzi, records show. The school system is the sole named defendant.
A spokesperson said the school system does “not discuss personnel matters or ongoing litigation involving the district.”
The civil complaint said Bergonzi taught science in the Brockton Public Schools for 17 years before he was hired in September 2024 as an associate principal at Barnstable High School, at a salary of $128,683.
Before receiving the job offer from Superintendent Sara Ahern over the phone, the district made it clear that any offer would be contingent on a review of his social media activity, the lawsuit said.
So when he he received the offer, he assumed he was in the clear. He successfully completed the “onboarding process” with human resources during the final week of September 2024 and received a start date of Oct. 7, 2024, prompting him to resign his tenured job in Brockton, according to the complaint.
At no time in the process did anyone raise concerns about his online comments, the filing said, and he began working at Barnstable High on Oct. 7.
On Oct. 15, the suit said, he received a letter from school officials laying out his salary, title, and start date, which the message said was “determined by a successful background check and completion of the onboarding process.”
The trouble began on Nov. 20, when Bergonzi was called to a meeting with the principal and the district’s head of human resources, according to the lawsuit.
Instead, with Bergonzi’s union representative present, the officials handed him a note that said he was being placed on paid administrative leave, “pending [an] investigation into allegations that there are memes and posts on [his] Facebook page that require an investigation,” the suit said.
Bergonzi later learned the probe was sparked by an email sent to school officials days earlier from someone who identified themselves only as a “concerned colleague,” the suit said.
The complaint included images of seven politically charged postings that Bergonzi had shared on his personal social media accounts before he applied for the Barnstable job.
The postings dealt mainly with immigration, including one depicting a photo of the Statue of Liberty with a caption asking where it says “bring me hostile, free loading assholes, waving their own flags,” the complaint said.
During a Dec. 3, 2024 meeting with Bergonzi, school officials acknowledged that he never identified himself as a BPS employee in the posts, and that the posts had caused no disturbance at school, the lawsuit stated.
“At no time during the November 20, 2024 or the December 3, 2024 meetings did Plaintiff receive any negative feedback about his work performance or professionalism,” the lawsuit said.
On Dec. 10, Ahern informed him he was being fired, “because his Facebook posts did not reflect the values of Barnstable Public Schools,” the complaint said.
The complaint said Bergonzi has since “been unable to secure comparable employment and faces diminished employment prospects in his chosen line of work.”
The school system hadn’t filed a response to the suit in court as of Thursday morning.
Bergonzi is seeking unspecified financial damages, records show.
“Public schools do not get to silence employees simply because they express opinions that administrators dislike,” Judicial Watch’s president, Tom Fitton, said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to hold Barnstable Public Schools accountable for violating the First Amendment and for reneging on promises that cost our client his tenured career.”
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