On February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, became the scene of a deadly mass shooting carried out by a 19-year-old former student. In the wake of the tragedy, anti-gun student walkouts were staged at schools throughout the nation. The walkouts were organized by leftwing activists for the expressed purpose of putting pressure on lawmakers to restrict the nation’s gun laws. And even though the nation is divided over limiting the 2nd Amendment, these activists used the nation’s impressionable school children as pawns to advance a political agenda.

David Kissner was the only educator in America willing to challenge the walkout campaign’s legitimacy. Before 2018, David was a popular 6th-grade math and science teacher at CT Middle School in Los Gatos, a mountain suburb of San Jose in Northern California. His opposition to the walkouts turned him into a pariah after informing school administrators that, under California law, students were not legally permitted to take excused absences while attending political rallies. And that under the U.S. Constitution, school officials were prohibited from lending their support to the walkouts’ message.

David also advised his class that anyone leaving to attend the political rally would receive a failing grade on an exam being given that day. Three students assumed that risk and left anyway.

Ordinarily, this might not have been a big deal. But remember, the walkouts represented a leftwing initiative. An incensed community called for David’s head. Social media blew up. He was ostracized, put on a leave of absence, and subjected to multiple investigations. Oh yes, and falsely accused of “grooming” children. This is how the “tolerant” Left operates in our world today.

While Freedom X managed to thwart efforts to discipline David in 2018, school authorities and grudge-bearing community members wouldn’t let go. In 2021, David took public stands against the Loma Prieta Joint Union School District’s wrongdoing, budgetary waste, fraud and abuse. (There’s a lot to the story.) Perhaps predictably, his principled opposition to district policies ultimately led to his expulsion. In an unprecedented move, the school district this year both layed him off and fired him.

Freedom X is appealing both the layoff and the dismissal in Santa Clara Superior Court. We argue that the reasons given for laying off and dismissing David were pretextual and retaliatory. But we have also filed a lengthy federal civil rights lawsuit against the school district and others who have defamed him and interfered with his freedom of speech.

We are, in essence, fighting three separate battles. But David—a service veteran (U.S. Marine Corps), a devout practicing Christian, a husband and a father, and a mentor to special needs and other children—did not deserve to be a victim of the Left’s lies and unalloyed rage.