EXCLUSIVE — An Illinois mother who was sued after criticizing a teacher in her local school district secured a decisive legal victory this week, with a judge dismissing the case against her with prejudice and barring a teacher who brought the lawsuit from ever refiling her claims.
Helen Levinson, a Chicago-area parent of two children, spent nearly five years fighting defamation and invasion-of-privacy allegations after she sent a complaint letter to her school district raising concerns about an educator’s conduct at board meetings and on social media. The case ended abruptly last week as it entered the discovery phase, when the plaintiff, Lincolnwood Elementary School assistant principal Jasmine Sebaggala, moved to drop the lawsuit permanently rather than proceed.
For Levinson, a Christian Arab immigrant from Jordan and founder of Moms for Liberty‘s Cook County chapter, the outcome amounts to a full vindication and a signal to other parents that speaking out on school issues is protected activity.
“This was about my right to speak as a parent,” Levinson, who lives in Skokie, Illinois, told the Washington Examiner. “If I didn’t have the support, it would have been very hard to get through.”
Levinson first became involved in local school debates in 2021, when she began hearing complaints from other parents about curriculum decisions over diversity, equity, and inclusion and anti-racist ideologies filtering into classrooms. She submitted a 14-page letter outlining her concerns about the conduct of Sebaggala, a fourth-grade public school teacher who is active in local equity and anti-racism advocacy with a group called Abolition Coalition. Within weeks, Levinson was named in a defamation suit for “falsely accus[ing] Sebaggala of falsifying racist events.”
The legal fight quickly expanded beyond a local dispute. Supporters of Sebaggala at one point started a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $44,000 for her legal defense, framing the case as part of a broader clash over education policy. The fundraiser described Sebaggala as a “Black educator” and “equity advocate” under attack by Moms for Liberty, which it characterized as a “hate group,” and argued the lawsuit was necessary to protect teachers from what it called “extremist” efforts to undermine diversity initiatives in schools.
Levinson’s attorneys at America First Legal argued the opposite, that the lawsuit itself was an attempt to punish a parent for engaging in protected speech. They characterized it as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, designed to deter criticism through prolonged and costly litigation.
Legal filings revealed a long stint of racial justice advocacy that Sebaggala engaged in, which was also the subject of her and Levinson’s online verbal spats. Records show the teacher attended several protests between 2020 and 2021, including at a June 8, 2021, “Protest and Anti-Racist Celebration” that was in part opposing police officers in schools.
Courts repeatedly sided with Levinson. A trial court dismissed earlier versions of the complaint in May 2023 and awarded her roughly $38,000 in legal fees in February 2024 under Illinois’s anti-SLAPP law. Although an appellate court allowed a narrow defamation claim to move forward, the case never reached trial.
Instead, Sebaggala withdrew the lawsuit last week, resulting in its dismissal with prejudice just as discovery was set to begin, a stage that would have required both sides to hand over evidence under oath.
“There’s a reason this case ended when it did,” said Nick Barry, an attorney for America First Legal who is representing Levinson. “Once it became clear the claims would have to be backed up with actual evidence, the plaintiff chose to walk away.”
Sebaggala’s lawyers cited personal health concerns in court as the reason for dismissing the case. But Barry said that explanation did not fully account for the timing, noting that courts routinely pause cases for medical issues rather than terminate them entirely.
For Levinson, the outcome underscores both the personal cost of the legal fight and the broader stakes for parents engaged in school governance debates. She said many parents privately supported her but were unwilling to speak publicly out of fear of retaliation.
“We get messages all the time from people who say they agree but don’t want to put themselves out there,” she said. “That tells you everything.”
Levinson’s attorneys say the case highlights a broader pattern in which litigation is used to discourage public participation, even if the claims ultimately fail.
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The dispute unfolded against a national backdrop of contentious school board battles over curriculum, diversity initiatives, and gender-related policies, where both sides increasingly frame the stakes in stark ideological terms.
It also comes as the Justice Department under President Donald Trump opened an investigation into 36 Illinois school districts to determine “whether they have included sexual orientation and gender ideology” content in any classes for grades pre-K to 12, a subject that Levinson also said has been a pervasive issue related to her advocacy in Illinois.