Former Girls High principal sues Philly School District, citing racial discrimination

The former principal of Philadelphia High School for Girls says she is the victim of racial discrimination at the hands of Philadelphia School District leaders, targeted after she withheld diplomas from students because of their conduct at graduation.

Lisa Mesi, an award-winning veteran administrator whom the district had previously relied upon to train its new principals, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the district and Tomas Hanna, the associate superintendent who supervises high schools.

The lawsuit stems from incidents surrounding the prestigious magnet school’s 2023 graduation ceremony. Mesi, like Girls’ High principals before her, told seniors they were expected to dress in all white and walk across the Kimmel Center stage sedately, without celebration. She warned them that if their families clapped, cheered, or called out their names, they would not be given their diplomas.

» READ MORE: Girls’ High denied a graduate her diploma because she danced across the stage

Diplomas were withheld from three students, including one who danced across the stage, drawing laughter from an audience member, and another who flipped her hair, prompting someone to clap. The diplomas were handed to the students after the ceremony.

Mesi, who is white, was removed from her job, the suit says, “as a form of discipline and given a demeaning ‘special assignment’ because she is white, and in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment right to refuse to appear at a public press conference and to issue a public apology, as requested by the defendants, regarding a matter of public concern that had racial overtones.”

The district said it does not comment on active litigation.

News of the withheld diplomas spread quickly on social media, eventually drawing international attention. While some defended Girls’ High traditions and Mesi’s right to enforce them, others said the rule was insensitive to Black culture. The three principals who preceded Mesi were Black.

Girls’ High, opened in 1848 as one of the nation’s first public high schools for women, had an “established rule and tradition” of requiring its graduates to process formally across the stage, without audience applause or shouting, according to the lawsuit.

School system officials, responding to a June 14 Inquirer request for comment on the Girls’ High diploma situation, said that “the district does not condone the withholding of earned diplomas based on family members cheering for their graduates. We apologize to all the families and graduates who were impacted and are further looking into this matter to avoid it happening in the future.”

School board President Reginald Streater later also castigated Mesi’s withholding of diplomas, saying it allowed “nonmaterial antiquated norms [to] preclude moments of inclusive joy that often follow moments of achievement/recognition.”

Ted Domers, the assistant superintendent who supervised Mesi at the time, told Mesi in an email that “your actions demonstrated a lack of respect to the students and their families. I understand that the decision to withhold the diploma from students at graduation is based on the Girls’ High tradition. However, it is my belief that this practice is, at best, outdated, and, at worst, a practice that lacks an awareness of culturally responsive norms.”

Mesi, in the lawsuit, took issue with the district’s response, saying that it “threw [her] under the bus” although she “had merely followed the same graduation ceremony rule that had been observed by her predecessors — with no adverse consequences”.

Domers left the district shortly after the graduation. He was replaced by Hanna, who, along with district spokesperson Monique Braxton, “pressured and attempted to compel” Mesi to apologize for withholding diplomas at a news conference, the lawsuit says.

Braxton, the suit says, told Mesi in a June 17 conversation that “if you were a Black woman, this would not be happening.”

Mesi refused to appear at the news conference, which was never held.

Though many members of the Girls’ High Alumnae Association defended Mesi, and the alumni group itself issued a statement supporting her, Mesi weathered significant public backlash.

“Many of the comments directed at Mesi were vulgar and obscene, with some falsely accusing Mesi of withholding the diplomas from the students because she is a racist,” the suit said. Eventually, police were informed of “threatening, crass and profane comments” about Mesi and members of her family; Mesi herself suffered from physical and emotional harm, the suit says.

Mesi was removed from the Girls High principalship on June 21, told that she was the subject of an investigation.

Eventually, she was found guilty of insubordination “for refusing to provide support for composing a public message” to respond to the diploma incident, and Mesi was transferred to a central office job “with prejudice,” the lawsuit says.

Mesi spent the 2023-24 school year as “principal on special assignment,” working a desk job performing “simplistic and menial tasks not suitable for someone of her caliber and with her experience and qualifications, such as creating PowerPoint slides and Excel sheets, and preparing emails and briefings for an Associate Superintendent.” It was “humiliating and demeaning” for Mesi, the suit says.

She applied for open administrative jobs, including associate superintendent and principal positions at Masterman, Greenberg, and Meredith Schools, but was rejected for all; Mesi maintains that less-qualified Black candidates were chosen for at least two of the jobs.

Ultimately, Mesi took a job as principal of Feltonville Arts and Sciences School, a job she holds today. But, the suit says, it is a “position that was far from the top of Mesi’s ‘wish list’ as compared to the positions for which she was rejected.”

The suit, filed in the U.S. Eastern District Court, says that Mesi was the victim of “discriminatory and retaliatory actions.”

“Had Mesi been a person of color, the school district would not have removed her as principal of Girls’ High and reassigned her to a lesser position,” the suit says.

Mesi is seeking damages for emotional pain, reputational harm, loss of earnings, and opportunities for professional advancement.