Former NFL player sues Huntington Beach district over his firing

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 30. I’m Carol Cormaci, bringing you this week’s TimesOC newsletter with a look at some of the latest local news and events from around the county. As I was wrapping up this week’s edition I learned of the 8.7-magnitude earthquake in Russia and the subsequent tsunami watch, a precautionary alert, that went into effect for coastal California Tuesday night. I’m hoping everyone will be safe and dry, and that if you have loved ones in impacted regions that they, too have remained unharmed.

One of the Orange County news stories that gained a lot of attention this week was the one my colleague Matt Szabo wrote about a former NFL punter who is suing Huntington Beach Union High School District.

Chris Kluwe, an outspoken activist who was arrested at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting in the past for an act of civil disobedience, is the plaintiff. In the lawsuit filed Monday, he and his attorneys maintain that when the school district fired him from his job coaching freshman football in February over a social media post he made that was critical of the City Council, they violated his 1st and 14th Amendment rights.

Kluwe took down the post, but of course once something’s out there in the ether it never really disappears. A community member, Chris Epting, cropped the post before it had been taken down to make it look more threatening than intended, Kluwe contends, then distributed it. Epting is also named in the lawsuit.

A little background for context: The night he was arrested in council chambers, Kluwe had been making a public comment about the plaque featured the controversial MAGA acrostic that the City Council approved to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Central Library.

According to this week’s news article, around that time Kluwe also posted on Bluesky, “encouraging people to stop complaining to the library, and start complaining to the City Council. ‘Stop [expletive] with the library,’ the post read. ‘That’s what the City Council is doing. The library is great, as are the people who work there. Go [expletive] with the City Council. Find where they work, and blow *those* places up.’

Kluwe says he didn’t mean to actually encourage violent acts at council members’ workplaces, but something more along the lines of blowing up their phones with complaints, but that last part was read as incendiary and the school district wasted no time in giving Kluwe his walking papers.

“With any level of investigation, the school district would have discovered that a group of politically-motivated MAGA loyalists had launched a campaign to ‘cancel’ Kluwe — i.e., to get him fired because his liberal politics and calls for him to run for City Council disgusted them,” the lawsuit alleges, in part.

HBUSD officials, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the suit.

Kluwe, a Democrat, recently announced he would be running for election to represent District 72 the state Assembly. If he follows through on that campaign, he’ll be pitted against one of his far right nemeses, none other than Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the self-described “MAGA-nificent 7” on the City Council who made it her mission to get “obscene” publications off the children’s shelves at the public library and approved the 50th anniversary plaque that prominently features the MAGA acrostic.

MORE NEWS

• If you were on the road between 11 a.m. and noon yesterday, you may have seen fire apparatuses from various fire departments staged on overpasses of the 5, the 55 and the 405 freeways. They were there to show their respects for Bill McQuaid, the Fountain Valley fire chief who died unexpectedly Friday at the age of 57 when he was on a bodyboarding trip to Huntington State Beach. The somber procession wound its way along the freeways as it transported McQuaid from the coroner’s office, past Fountain Valley City Hall and to a mortuary.

• A proposed Meritage Homes project that would bring a 142-unit housing development to the site of the old Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters on Bear Street has passed muster with the Costa Mesa Planning Commission and will next be considered by the City Council, according to this Daily Pilot report.

• You may have heard there’s been an uptick of COVID this summer. The test positivity rate in Orange County is at 6.3% and increasing, the L.A. Times reports, but “still below recent years for this time of the year,” according to Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, deputy medical director of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

• Citing little in the way of results, a four-year pilot program to seed clouds in hopes of bringing more rainfall to the Santa Ana River Watershed that got underway in late 2023 was canceled this month. “There was not strong evidence of a significant precipitation increase. If there was any success, it was very low, especially compared to other instances of cloud seeding in other regions,” Emily Fuentes, spokesperson for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, explained.

• Two members of the Orange City Council asked their colleagues last week to consider passing a resolution that would take a stance against the use of facial coverings by federal immigration agents rounding up undocumented immigrants. Councilmembers Arianna Barrios and Ana Gutierrez were unable to persuade the others to get on board with their idea. “They don’t have to listen to the city of Orange,” Councilmember Jon Dumitru said. “In the end, it’s a piece of paper that doesn’t matter. Santa Ana [a declared sanctuary city] even backed away from passing a resolution like this.”

• Seimone Jurjis, who has served as assistant city manager of Newport Beach for the past two years, will succeed City Manager Grace Leung when she retires in December, the City Council decided last week. Jurjis’s salary will start at $363,000 annually, according to the Daily Pilot report. This change of City Hall leadership has raised some eyebrows in the community. Some residents objected to the appointment of the insider to the city manager post without opening the process up to applicants, while others decried the $455,000 payout the City Council recently approved for Leung.

PUBLIC SAFETY & CRIME

• Craig Charron, who was convicted in the spring of fatally stabbing his estranged girlfriend, Laura Sardinha, in her Huntington Beach apartment almost five years ago, was sentenced Friday to 26 years to life in prison. According to the L.A. Times, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy called it a “senseless and brutal” crime and gave Charron the maximum sentence allowed by law.

• An Irvine man on Monday was charged with a racially motivated road rage incident that took place on Sand Canyon Avenue on the morning of July 22, City News Service reported. Robert Leon Tackett, 54, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, violation of civil rights, assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and inflicting injury on an elder adult, all felonies. Investigators asked anyone with relevant information about Tackett to contact them at rsteen@cityofirvine.org.

SPORTS

• It was an eventful weekend for the Angels. On Friday night, Angels outfielder Chris Taylor broke his left hand for the second time this season and is expected to be sidelined for at least six weeks. His teammate Mike Trout on Sunday hit a two-run homer in the fifth inning of a game against the Seattle Mariners to reach his 1,000 career RBI. It was his 397th career homer and 19th this season as the Angels beat the Seattle Mariners 4-1. And, although it wasn’t one of the Angels hitting this milestone, the crowd on Saturday night witnessed Seattle’s Cal Raleigh become the first player to hit 40 homers this season when the Mariners beat the Halos, 7-2.

• Anaheim Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal signed a five-year contract on Thursday to remain with the team, according to an Associated Press story in the L.A. Times. “Lukas has proven he is a No. 1 goaltender and we are so pleased to get this deal done,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek told the AP.

• The North Irvine Beast Boys, comprised of players from different high schools, beat the Newport Beach Water Polo Club to win the 18-and-under gold medal match of the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics last week at the Woollett Aquatics Center in Irvine. On Sunday, the Saddleback-El Toro Water Polo Club Black also captured gold in the 18U girls division when it beat beat Regency, 8-5, and they made history in doing so, as they were the first girls club since the tournament began in 1989 to win three consecutive 18-under Platinum Division titles. Additional coverage of the competition can be found here.

• A member of Palisades Tennis Club in Newport Beach, Cynthia Neiman, was recently elected to serve as the board president of the Southern California section of the United States Tennis Assn., the first female in its 138-year history to hold that position.

LIFE & LEISURE

• A fair share of beachside brilliance was going on last Saturday when families competed in the annual Balboa Island Family Sandcastle Contest put on by a legendary local sandcastle expert, Chris Crosson, and the Balboa Island Improvement Assn.

• My colleague Andrew Turner was checking out some of the exhibits at the Orange County Fair last week when he came across “Rewind: A VHS Revival.” A major component of the exhibit is the spotlight its curator, Joy Feuer, put on the artists and processes behind the creation of movie posters. You can read his in-depth feature story on “Rewind.”

• The founder of the Huntington Beach nonprofit Robyne’s Nest, which assists at-risk and homeless high school students, has decided she will step back from her decade-long position at the helm the organization in January. Robyne Wood, who started it all with a food pantry for the teens, has been the catalyst for the nonprofit’s growth, her admirers told the Daily Pilot. Today, in addition to the pantry, it operates a mental health and wellness program, a shared transitional living house for abandoned and neglected teens and a thrift shop that’s open to the public.

• A new Board & Brew sandwich shop opened up last week on Coast Highway at Ocean Avenue in downtown Laguna Beach, making it the 33rd location for the chain that opened its first eatery in Del Mar back in 1979.

CALENDAR

• The 41st Irvine Annual, a juried art exhibition, features a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and fiber that can be displayed on a wall, a new requirement this year. The show runs through Aug. 30 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, 14321 Yale Ave. For more details visit artsinirvine.org.

• There’s still time to buy tickets for Motorhome Madness taking place at 7:30 tonight and tomorrow night in the Action Sports Arena at the Orange County Fair. Area mayors and first responders will be battling it out in a demolition derby for a good cause: all proceeds benefit Children’s Hospital Orange County. Tickets include free same-day admission to the Fair. To purchase seats or donate directly to the cause, visit raiseup.choc.org/derby.

Until next week,
Carol

KEEP IN TOUCH

We appreciate your help in making this the best newsletter it can be. Please send news tips, your memory of life in O.C. (photos welcome!) or comments to carol.cormaci@latimes.com.