A U.S. District Court Judge in Urbana has granted a motion to dismiss a case which had been filed by a former Financial Resource Director for Vermilion County. Nicole ‘Nicki’ Bogart had alleged that her First Amendment Rights were violated when she was terminated from the Financial Resource Director position in 2015 because of her political affiliation.
U.S. District Judge Colin Bruce granted the motion dismissing the case which had been filed against Vermilion County Board Chairman Mike Marron and Vermilion County. Although he dismissed the case in federal court, Judge Bruce also found that questions presented regarding state law claims are questions best left for an Illinois court to resolve.
Bogart was terminated from the position of Financial Resource Director for Vermilion County on January 30, 2015. The firing came one month after former County Board Chairman Gary Weinard resigned as board chairman and Mike Marron became the new chairman. [Marron is shown in the photo.]
The ruling handed down by Judge Bruce noted that in 2012, Weinard told Bogart he was getting a lot of pressure to fire her. Some Republican Board members wanted Weinard to ‘’clean house’’ and get rid of Democrats in the County Board Office after Republicans took over the County Board – according to testimony in the case. But Weinard said he had no intensions of dismissing anyone.
Marron had testified in the federal court case that he was familiar with the fact that public employees have certain rights within the workplace, and that First Amendment rights in the U.S. and Illinois Constitutions grant the right to run for a political office. Marron also testified that he recognized that for a government employer to terminate a government employee for running for political office would be unlawful.
It was in February of 2015 that Vermilion County Democratic Party Chairman Frank Wright called Bogart’s dismissal ‘’very disturbing’’. Wright said he had heard that (then) new County Board Chairman Mike Marron planned to purge Democrats from the county payroll. Marron strongly denied that it had anything to do with politics. And at the time Marron added that it was a personnel matter, and that he did not think it was appropriate or fair to comment publically.
