A woman sued Scripps College Tuesday, alleging she was wrongfully terminated in 2024 from her job as a social media manager because she had pro-Palestinan views that conflicted with the Zionist leanings of a supervisor.
Annika Rose Lindberg’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit additionally alleges retaliation and discrimination. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. A representative for the Claremont liberal arts college did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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,” the suit states.
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.
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.”