A former South Hills High School teacher who was placed on leave last year after writing a Facebook post where he allegedly condoned teachers having sex with students is teaching at another high school in the Covina-Valley Unified School District, officials confirmed this week.

Art teacher Sean Kane started the current academic year at Northview High School as part of a mutually agreed upon inter-district transfer, said Superintendent Richard Sheehan.

“It’s not uncommon for teachers to transfer from one school to another,” said Sheehan, declining to comment on the reason for the transfer because it was a personnel issue. “To my knowledge, he’s doing really well.”

A teacher in the district since 2001, Kane was placed on administrative paid leave in February after allegedly writing on his Facebook page that male students tied to the arrests of two female teachers, who later pleaded guilty to sex and drug charges, should have kept their “stupid mouths shut and enjoyed it.”

Although the district confirmed through an investigation that Kane did, in fact, write the Facebook post, the decision to transfer him was not a disciplinary measure, Sheehan said. Kane declined to comment for this story.

“They’re two independent things,” he said of the investigation and the school transfer.

And while teachers are entitled to free speech rights under the first amendment and California labor laws, legal experts say the district could pursue some sort of discipline, including termination, in this case.

“A court might well conclude that the school district’s interest in protecting students from sexual overtures by teachers outweighs his interest in opining on the propriety of high school boys having sex with their teachers,” said UC Irvine School of Law Professor Catherine Fisk, who teaches labor law and the first amendment. “Courts tend to defer to the government as an employer in deciding when to discipline employees for their off work comments.”

Sheehan, who started his new job at Covina-Valley in July, was not around when the decision to transfer Kane was made, but he said Kane posted the comments on his private Facebook page and they were only made public when someone else shared the post.

“His intent was for it to never be public,” he said.