Jury rules against fired FAU professor
Plaintiff who blogged that Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax loses free speech lawsuit
A former Florida Atlantic University professor who claimed he was fired in retaliation for blogging that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax lost his bid to get his job back.
Jurors in the federal free speech lawsuit filed by James Tracy took just three hours to reject his claim that the university terminated him for his conspiracy theory blog.
The university said he lost his tenured position because he repeatedly refused to obey reasonable requests from his bosses.
Tracy, who also harassed the parents of a 6-year-old who was killed in the Sandy Hook shootings, alleged the university was illegally punishing him for his free speech.
The only question the jury had to answer: Was Tracy’s blogging a “motivating factor” in FAU’s decision to fire him? To win, Tracy would have had to prove his case by a preponderance of the evidence — meaning it was more likely true than not true.
The eight jurors responded with a unanimous “no.”
“We just tried to stay away from the emotion of the case and we focused on the evidence, not hearsay or opinions,” the jury foreman told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Tracy, 52, a father of four from Boca Raton, was a communications professor for FAU from 2002 until January 2016. He received tenure in 2008.
The controversy began in late 2012 after Tracy posted conspiracy theories on his Memory Hole blog about whether the Sandy Hook mass shooting — which killed 20 children and six
teachers — had really happened. Tracy hinted at a government conspiracy and later contributed a chapter and timeline to the book “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook: It Was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported on Tracy’s blogging in January 2013 and the story was picked up by national and international media.
The publicity led to widespread criticism and distaste regarding Tracy’s methods and words, which included writing that the families of the victims — the parents of murdered elementary schoolchildren — were “playing a role.”
In the following years, Tracy also engaged in a feud with the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, who died in the Newtown, Conn., shootings.
FAU officials say they never censored Tracy or prevented him from expressing his conspiracy theorist opinions. They say he was fired after repeatedly and intentionally refusing to file mandatory disclosure forms that require all professors to reveal outside work and activities that could affect their work or the university.
Tracy said he had no comment after the verdict, but one of his attorneys called reporters “presstitutes” and yelled “fake news” at them as he left the courthouse.
Tracy’s team of attorneys said they plan to appeal U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg’s pre-trial rulings. Tracy’s lawsuit sought his reinstatement as a tenured professor and unspecified damages.
G. Joseph Curley, one of the private attorneys who represented FAU, said university officials were glad they got to “set the record straight” after years of controversy.
“It always seemed like his priority was the blog … and that’s what he was spending his time on,” Curley said.
The trial, in federal court in West Palm Beach, began Nov. 29 and featured testimony from Tracy and several FAU officials.
Tracy’s attorneys positioned the case as a key argument on the right to free speech and the principles of academic freedom. FAU said it was about an employee who didn’t want to listen to his bosses, his peers or his union officials.
The jury foreman, who spoke to the South Florida Sun Sentinel but said he did not want his name published because he feared he would be bombarded by conspiracy theorists, said jurors decided the evidence was not enough to tip the scales to Tracy’s side.
"It did seem like FAU inconsistently enforced some policies, and there was some poor communication at times. But Professor Tracy is a smart guy, and he knew what they wanted him to do," the juror said.
Tracy’s team of attorneys told the jury that Tracy was a victim of retaliation because FAU officials “didn’t like what he was saying.”
“They thought he was a nut job,” attorney Matthew Benzion said in his closing argument.
“They didn’t like his speech and they wanted him gone,” Benzion said. Tracy’s team argued FAU violated his free speech rights and then came up with a pretext to get rid of him and make it look legitimate.
Curley told the jury that Tracy’s firing was not motivated by his blogging and said he was fired for repeatedly breaking the rules about disclosing outside activities and earnings and refusing to follow orders from his bosses. Tracy continued his controversial blog and other activities for three years before FAU fired him.
“He doesn’t play by the rules,” Curley said. And that doesn’t work at a large institution like FAU, where officials rely on their 3,300 employees to be upfront and abide by the honor system, he said.
Tracy used his position as an FAU professor for “selfpromotion” and to bolster his blog’s reputation, Curley said. FAU officials testified Tracy lied to them about using university resources to write his blog and produce a podcast.
Tracy also repeatedly violated an agreement he made with his bosses that he would distance his personal writings from his university role and make it very clear that his blogging and public speech reflected his own opinions, not FAU’s position.
Curley listed several examples of Tracy’s failure to follow the rules and comply with reasonable requests from his employers.
“The school wasn’t his priority. The school was a platform for him — that’s not what it’s supposed to be about,” Curley said.