Ex-principal wants job back, claims sex discrimination in firing over shoplifting arrests
Amy Yarborough Necaise is accusing the Bay-Waveland School District of sexual discrimination over loss of her job as Bay High School principal after being charged with shoplifting on three separate occasions in August at the Waveland Walmart.
Necaise “was fired while male employees have had serious crimes actively covered up by the district,” her attorney, Daniel Waide of Hattiesburg, writes in the lawsuit.
“Not only have the male employees not been fired or reprimanded,” Necaise says in another document filed with the court, “but the district works to ensure that no one even finds out about the charges made against male employees.”
Necaise says a male school bus driver kept his job after pleading guilty to a DUI. And she says the district took no action against another white male caught using drugs, allowing him to “be around the youth and children in the schools.”
The lawsuit does not name the male employees or offer any further details about their situations. The school district has not responded to a voicemail the Sun Herald left about the lawsuit.
Necaise, a Bay St. Louis resident, has filed her lawsuit against the district in Hancock County Circuit Court, where she is seeking unspecified damages as compensation, along with punitive damages. She also wants to be reinstated to the principal’s job, which she had held since 2013.
The school district has not yet filed its legal response to Necaise’s lawsuit, submitted in March.
Necaise faces multiple Walmart shoplifting charges
Necaise’s profile on LinkedIn says she is now working as a school improvement coach for The Kirkland Group and as a contract employee for the U.S. Department of Education in the administration of school testing for the Nation’s Report Card.
She remained on the job at Bay High after her first arrest in August on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. Her lawsuit says that she “promptly” reported her arrest to the district. She was then charged a second time with shoplifting from the discount retail store on two other occasions in August.
All told, the items she is accused of taking while using a self-checkout register would have cost her just under $200. The security team at Walmart filed the charges. According to the district, Necaise agreed to resign after her second arrest.
She filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Sept. 28, saying that she expected to be exonerated on the shoplifting charges.
However, she pleaded no contest in November to one misdemeanor shoplifting charge in exchange for having the other two charges dismissed. A no-contest plea is an admission that enough evidence exists for a conviction.
Necaise was ordered to serve one year on non-reporting probation and undergo therapy for a year. She was also banned for life from the Waveland Walmart.
Necaise says in the lawsuit that her termination caused her lost wages and benefits, humiliation and anxiety.
