A judge has allowed a discrimination lawsuit against St. Paul Public Schools to move forward, finding that a teacher’s comments linking two African-American students’ behavior to the educational achievement gap were “sufficiently severe and offensive” to allege a civil rights violation.

Dennis Verrett Jr. sued the district last year over remarks that Expo Elementary teacher James Hinkley made near the end of the 2016-17 school year.

When two African-American students were socializing instead of focusing on school work, Hinkley asked them what kind of students they wanted to be.

He then said that “the achievement gap is a horrible situation across the District and Minnesota and it’s based on skin color,” according to a written reprimand signed by his principal, Darren Yerama.

“Multiple students became upset, attributing this comment to singling out students based on race and their actions to the cause of the achievement gap,” the letter continued.

Verrett wrote that his fifth-grade daughter, who is African-American but was not one of the off-task students, left the class in tears. The family enrolled in a different district the following school year.

U.S. District Judge David Doty last week allowed the case to move forward on discrimination, human rights and equal protection claims, rejecting most of the district’s motion to dismiss it.

“The take-away from this experience for the entire young, fifth-grade class could very well have been that African-American students do not achieve academically at the same rate as white and other student groups because, as a group, African-American students are more prone to disruptive classroom behavior and academic failure,” Doty wrote.

“The fact that the comment came from the students’ science teacher, a significant authority figure, only compounds the severity of the incident and the trauma T.S.V. claims to have endured.”

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St. Paul City Council debates halting charter school bond requests for six months Doty wrote that an assistant principal made the situation worse by showing the girl statistics to back up Hinkley’s point and by requiring her to complete “a behavioral reflection form,” as if she had done something wrong.

The school district had argued Hinkley’s comments should be considered an isolated incident, not the sort of pervasive harassment that civil rights laws are meant for.

Hinkley is still employed as a St. Paul teacher but did not have an assignment last year and was not paid.