The former Meramec Professor’s lawsuit against the college appears to have ended
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
Dr. Emily Neal’s case against the college will never go to trial, as the two sides reportedly have settled, according to documents found exclusively on PACER. As part of the settlement, Neal’s lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning she can not bring the case to court again. Both parties are on the hook for their legal fees.
This comes several months after both sides had agreed to move the case to a third-party arbitrator. In documents found exclusively on PACER, the two sides agreed to move the case to arbitration in July, though a motion for extension was granted the following month.
Neal’s suit, first filed in the fall of 2024, centered on her claims that the college terminated her employment following several conflicts with the college administration; Neal had been an outspoken member of the faculty union. Campus President Feleccia Moore-Davis, Dean Patrick Mallory and the now outgoing Vice President of Academic Affairs Andrew Langrehr are named in the suit, with several allegations directed at Dean Mallory in particular.
Rumblings about the circumstances behind Neal’s abrupt departure had circulated around the campus for years before the lawsuit became public knowledge. According to the lawsuit, it came about after what she said were years of issues.
She had notably clashed with STLCC’s leadership over the years, and specifically during Chancellor Jeff Pittman’s ongoing tenure. In this lawsuit, she detailed a few of those incidents, including an incident in 2017 where she received a written reprimand for comments she made during one of her classes about the college’s board of trustees, which she says was contrary to the college’s policies at the time. She argues that this incident was retaliatory, as was another incident in 2021, where she claims she was reprimanded again for what the college alleged was “improper word choice and tone” in an email to a colleague regarding their unauthorized access to one of Neal’s online class spaces. The college’s reprimand was overturned but Neal claims that her work environment progressively worsened after filing another grievance against Dean Mallory regarding that incident.
Specifically, the one direct event that allegedly led to her removal were comments she made at an off-campus lunch in mid-August 2022 with members of her department regarding the activities of other administrators, including allegations of an affair between a high-level administrator and a subordinate and that another senior administrator permitted their child to bypass the waitlist for enrollment in a popular degree program. After several months, Neal was formally terminated in March of 2023.
Neal was legally represented by Laura E. Schrick, a member of the Mathis, Marifian & Richter firm out of Belleville, Illinois.
