Crime & Safety

Man Claims 'Misguided Feminists' Cost Him Job in Iowa School District

IOWA CITY, IA -- A former Iowa football player, who has taken legal action against school officials in the past, says in a complaint against the Iowa City School District he was passed over for multiple jobs because he is a white man.

Mike Lopos told the Iowa City Press-Citizen that he didn't get para-educator jobs he applied for even though he is qualified.

"I’m one of the biggest advocates of feminists and one of the biggest advocates of not being a gender-biased person, but you have a lot of misguided feminists in that district that think they’re untouchable. Any time anyone questions them, they just can’t handle it,” Lopos told the Press-Citizen. “ ... The thing they can’t handle is a former Iowa football player who says, ‘I’m smarter than you.’”

Lopos, who has teaching credentials in Iowa and Connecticut, told the paper, his credential also include "a clean record, no molestation, no drugs, no beating up women.”

The complaint was filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission late last year, the Press-Citizen reports.

RecordJournal.com in Connecticut wrote in 2012:

MERIDEN - A city native, who has had two lawsuits against a former school superintendent and the Board of Education dismissed, has filed another lawsuit claiming retaliation, discrimination and cronyism in the school district’s hiring choices.

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In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford this month, Michael John Lopos, 58, claims school administrators blackballed him from ever being hired for a teaching or other position. He is asking for punitive damages of $100,000 for emotional suffering, and long-term unemployment.

...

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In the past 35 years, he has worked as a teacher of homebound students, a tutor, a paraprofessional, a physical therapy aide and a substitute teacher. His most recent job, from 2007 to 2008, was as an in-school suspension and testing center supervisor at an Iowa high school. His resume does not list any employment after 2008 but contains several positive letters of recommendation from educators in Iowa and teachers and supervisors in Meriden.

The report says that Lopos at the time lived in Bloomfield, CT. 

Archives from the Morning Record (Meriden, CT) say Lopos was a standout rusher and linebacker for Maloney High School in 1970. He came out to Iowa to attend Marshalltown Community College. He ended up walking on at University of Iowa played as an undersized defensive tackle.  


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