Scripps College wants a judge to strike a woman’s claim for attorneys’ fees in a lawsuit alleging she was wrongfully terminated in 2024 from her job as a social media manager because her pro-Palestinian views conflicted with her supervisor’s Zionist leanings, arguing the claim is premature.
Annika Rose Lindberg’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit additionally alleges retaliation and discrimination. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys’ fees. But in court papers filed Thursday with Judge Christopher K. Lui in advance of a Dec. 17 hearing, lawyers for the Claremont liberal arts institution state that the school has no obligation to honor Lindberg’s request unless she wins at trial.
“The default American Rule is that each party to a lawsuit must pay her or their own attorney’s fees,” the Scripps lawyers state in their court papers. “Here, the complaint requests attorney’s fees without identifying any contractual or statutory basis to justify the request.”
According to her suit, Lindberg was hired in October and her supervisor’s assistant “repeatedly praised her organizational skills and positively affirmed that plaintiff was a great fit for the role.”
Lindberg told her supervisor’s assistant that same day that she would soon seek time off for an upcoming student conduct hearing related to the plaintiff’s participation in an on-campus protest embracing the Palestinian cause, the suit states.
Lindberg told the assistant that she backed a ceasefire in Gaza and asked the assistant to not say anything to Lindberg’s supervisor, whom the plaintiff believes is a “known proponent of Zionism,” the suit states.
In addition, the supervisor sent out emails to Scripps alumni critical of a circulated petition calling for a ceasefire, and he also voiced anti-Palestinian statements to Scripps’ student body, referring to pro-Palestine support as “sloganeering” and “propaganda,” according to the suit filed Jan. 28.
Although the assistant assured the plaintiff that her political views would not jeopardize her job, the next day the aide called Lindberg and said, “After a lot of thought and consideration, I don’t think you’re a good fit for this job,” the suit states.
Lindberg believes she was terminated for her political views, affiliations and beliefs, according to the suit, which further states that Lindberg has been left “embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated, emotionally destroyed, psychologically ruined and in financial desperation.”