Teising threatens lawsuit over back pay, more after being booted as Wabash Twp. trustee
Former trustee seeks $834K, 20 times more than township board offered last summer. Plus, how schools, local police brace for calls to help on deportations, even as AG Rokita ramps up to back Trump
Jennifer Teising, former Wabash Township trustee forced from office when she was convicted on 21 felony counts of theft tied to questions about her residency, filed a tort claim notice this month that she’s owed more than $800,000 from Wabash Township for lost wages and damage to her reputation.
The letter, a precursor to a lawsuit, names elected leaders of Wabash Township and members of the township’s fire department over what Teising’s attorneys called “unlawful actions and allegations.”
In a letter sent Jan. 17 to Wabash Township, Teising’s attorneys wrote that she’d “incurred significant and devastating damages to her professional and personal life, emotional distress, mental anguish, lost wages, lost earning capacity and irreparable damage to her reputation as a good and decent professional and public servant.”
The letter, from attorneys with Frankfort-based Power, Little, Little & Little, put the price at $834,572.38 for a legal battle and conviction eventually set aside by higher courts.
That’s 20 times more than the $39,992.41 the Wabash Township Board approved in August 2024 as a proposed settlement for backpay to Teising.
Wabash Township Trustee Angel Valentin declined to comment, saying the township doesn’t comment on pending or threatened litigation.
Teising also declined to comment further, leaving questions to her attorneys.
In a January 2022 ruling, Tippecanoe Superior Judge Kristen McVey agreed with the prosecution, writing that after Teising sold her West Lafayette home in June 2020, tried to recruit a replacement as trustee and told people she planned to move to Florida, Teising’s pursuit of “a nomadic RV lifestyle” for the rest of 2020 and parts of 2021 was the same as forfeiting the position. McVey ruled that forfeiting the position while collecting a paycheck was the same as theft, as she’d been charged.
In her ruling, McVey referenced a police investigation of Teising’s phone records that indicated she’d spent 27 nights in Wabash Township over the course of nearly 10 months. The bulk of the rest were in an RV park in Panama City Beach, Florida, camping on the driveway of friends in Anderson, at a friend’s property on the other side of Tippecanoe County or on the road.
Teising’s sentence, delayed during the appeals process, would have put her in jail for 124 days, community corrections for another 124, followed by more than two more years on probation, in addition to more than $27,000 in restitution.
The Jan. 17 tort claim notice contended that “higher courts found that, not only was the finding of guilt incorrect, but each court found a different reason why Ms. Teising was innocent of these charges.”
Higher courts did come at Teising’s initial conviction from two directions.
In December 2022, a year after Teising’s three-day bench trial, the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned her conviction, ruling that prosecutors hadn’t made their case that she’d abandoned residence in the township and therefore shouldn’t have been booted from office.
The Court of Appeals agreed with Teising’s arguments that what she’d done equated to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown and was roughly the same as what snowbirds do when they winter in Florida with every intention of moving back to Indiana.
Writing for the three-member panel on the Court of Appeals, Judge Robert Altice said: “Our task on appeal is not to determine whether Teising was derelict in her duties as trustee while camping outside the township and working remotely for many months during the pandemic. Indeed, her constituents may have compelling cause for concern. The question before us, rather, is whether her acts constituted theft. We conclude that the evidence presented in this case does not support the twenty-one convictions of theft, as the state failed to establish that Teising ceased being a resident of Wabash Township.”
In 12-page unanimous decision issued in February 2024, Indiana Supreme Court justices ruled that prosecutors might have found civil options to remove Teising from office during a tumultuous time when she sold her home and went absent from the West Lafayette-based township for long stretches.
But they ruled that Teising didn’t believe she quit meeting residency laws for township trustees, so she didn’t have intent to steal money by cashing trustee paychecks – which cut to the core of grand jury indictments and an ultimate ruling from the December 2021 bench trial.
“The state rests its case entirely on the fact that Teising was aware of both the requirement to reside within the township and her own nomadic lifestyle,” Justice Derek Molter wrote in a ruling for the Supreme Court.
“And, the state argues, that lifestyle produced a chain of legal consequences: by leaving the township indefinitely, she stopped residing in the township as a matter of law; then by not complying with the constitutional requirement to reside within the township, she forfeited her office; and then by forfeiting her office, her paychecks became ill-gotten gains,” Molter wrote. “But even if we assume Teising stopped residing in the township and therefore forfeited her office as a matter of law (questions we do not decide), the State didn’t prove Teising knew she forfeited her office, nor, more importantly, that she knew her paychecks had become ill‐gotten gains.”
The tort claim notice is the latest in what had been a contentious time in local politics.
Teising was elected township trustee in 2018. When she was indicted in May 2021, Teising was a fixture in media coverage for her absences – including being tracked down by Journal & Courier reporters during an extended stay in a Florida RV park – and her handling of the Wabash Township Fire Department.
She was portrayed as a villain during often tense meetings in the summer of 2021 in the Wabash Township Fire Station bays as the firefighter layoffs loomed and the trustee refused to back down. Members of the Wabash Township Board openly rooted for her conviction during some of the most heated moments during those meetings. (During one meeting that Teising skipped, she was spotted at a local brewery having a drink as the township board raced to deal with the loss of firefighters.)
She was the subject of a Statehouse meeting called by local General Assembly members who called on her to step down and looked for ways to force her to cooperate with the board and firefighters. Teising also was offered as a poster child for a law passed in 2022 that allows township boards to initiate a process to remove a trustee from office.
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IMMIGRATION ORDERS AND LOCAL SCHOOLS, POLICE
This week, Indianapolis Public Schools sent a letter to parents that the district would not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into schools without a warrant, even as President Donald Trump issued an directive the rescinded Biden administration guidelines from 2021 that curtailed ICE actions at schools, churches, hospitals and other areas deemed “sensitive.” (From the Department of Homeland Security, after Trump’s directive issued Jan. 21: “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”) This is from a story this week by WFYI reporter Sydney Dauphinais: “In the email to families, IPS included a link to a new webpage with information and resources for undocumented students and families. The page states that IPS staff have been trained to respond to situations involving undocumented families and that the district is collaborating with legal advisors.” Here's more from WFYI on that: “IPS won’t allow ICE inside schools without a warrant.”
In Tippecanoe County, Lafayette School Corp. Superintendent Les Huddle said the district hadn’t sent similar notices to parents.
“We are waiting for legal guidance from the Indiana School Board Association, and we hope to have it soon,” Huddle said Friday.
Shawn Greiner, West Lafayette Community School Corp. superintendent, said the corporation “has paid close attention to legal developments as the new administration has taken office.”
“Currently, we are not sending out any notification to parents,” Greiner said. “We’ve refreshed our administrators on best practices when handling an outside agency’s request to access students. We have confidence our administrators can handle such situations by working closely with legal counsel to ensure compliance with all applicable laws. Our commitment is to maintain a safe and supportive school environment for all students.”
Tippecanoe School Corp. hadn’t sent notes along the lines of the ones from IPS, either, TSC spokeswoman Sue Scott said Friday.
Meanwhile, during a press conference Friday in South Bend, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said to “stay tuned” on actions coming from the state regarding immigration and schools. Rokita was in South Bend to announce a lawsuit filed Friday against the St. Joseph County sheriff over what Rokita called a lack of local cooperation with detainer requests – basically 48-hour holds on suspects requested by federal immigration officers.
If that sounds familiar, Rokita’s ongoing beef with St. Joseph County came of a series of demands of communities the attorney general considered “sanctuary cities,” in some fashion. Among those, Rokita targeted the West Lafayette Police Department over a section of the department’s policies on immigration. The city disputed whether it was doing anything to skirt state or federal law and that Rokita had targeted a policy that had boilerplate language used by hundreds of police agencies in Indiana. But the city tweaked the WLPD policy manual to quell Rokita’s threat of a lawsuit. Rokita mentioned the situation from summer 2024 in his South Bend press conference. Here’s more on how that played out: “WLPD will adjust immigration policy after Rokita’s ‘sanctuary city’ threat.”)
In 2024, after receiving similar allegations and demands from Rokita, St. Joseph County officials denied having policies prohibited or restricted actions or communications with ICE of any of the department's officers or jail staff, according to reporting by ABC57. They also denied that the county had a “sanctuary city policy.”
On Friday, the St. Joseph Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that Rokita was off base, calling his comments false and that the department works with federal officials. More here, via WSBT: “St. Joseph County Police Department responds to Indiana AG immigration lawsuit.” During his press conference, Rokita said his office had a different opinion about that, outlined in the lawsuit.
For more on Lafayette, West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County police roles, if any, on deportation and other immigration actions, J&C reporter Ron Wilkins had this: “ICE immigration enforcement not likely to change local police operations.”
On Friday, Rokita focused much of his every-state-is-a-border-state message about resources in the classroom. Rokita was asked about how he would treat school districts if they aren't cooperative with the kind of mass deportations outlined by the Trump administration.
“Stay tuned on that one,” Rokita said, hinting at more on the way. “We haven't focused on school districts particularly, but we’re getting some information about school districts from around the state and about their noncooperation, especially with the new administration. I remain committed to help the Trump administration rid our communities of law breakers like illegal aliens.”
AT THE STATEHOUSE …
This comes from IndyStar reporter Brittany Carloni: “Republican lawmakers are advancing legislation that would make it easier to crack down on illegal immigration in Indiana, just days after President Donald Trump signed executive orders to do the same across the country. House Bill 1393, which already passed out of committee this week, would require law enforcement officers to notify their county sheriff if they arrest someone for a felony or a misdemeanor and have probable cause to believe that person is not legally allowed in the U.S. County sheriffs would then notify proper authorities, according to the bill.” Of note in Carloni’s account: State Rep. Sheila Klinker, a Lafayette Democrat, was one of two votes Thursday against moving the bill out of committee to the full Indiana House. For more from the IndyStar: “Indiana lawmakers push illegal immigration crackdown, days after Trump's executive orders.”
A Senate bill is challenging Purdue and other universities in the state to admit more students from Indiana. Mirror Indy reporter Claire Rafford had a look at Senate Bill 448 from state Sen. Greg Goode, a Terre Haute Republican, and testimony this week in a Senate committee: “Some Indiana colleges could be forced to enroll more in-state students.” From her story, was this from Goode: “‘We invest billions of dollars on campuses and construction,’ who previously worked for Indiana State University, “and I have heard some frustration from individuals who have sons and daughters who have very competitive scores that are denied at some of our universities.’ If the legislation is passed as written, it would most likely affect Purdue University and Indiana University Bloomington, as these two state schools attract the most out-of-state students. As of fall 2024, 55% of IU Bloomington’s first-year class was from Indiana, while 41% of Purdue’s first-year class were Indiana residents.” That balance has been one Purdue has tried to finesse over the past decade, as enrollment has boomed at year-over-year records and the university has had to fend off low grumbling about covering its long-running tuition freeze with out-of-state students who pay premium rates to come to West Lafayette. Purdue’s enrollment data considers the Indianapolis campus as part of the West Lafayette enrollment. The total was 58,009 at the start of the fall 2024 semester. (Purdue listed 55,119 on the actual West Lafayette campus at that time.) Of 44,170 undergraduates enrolled, 44.2% were from Indiana and 45.8% were from other states in the U.S. The rest of the undergrads were international students. For more on SB448 from Rafford’s story, read it here.
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A dozen centuries ago, Sanctuary was protected in English common law. Basically the king deferred to church authority in this area. Our first amendment stopped this, restoring secular control. Now that the courts have started privileging the free exercise of religion over other rights, I wonder if a legal argument for sanctuary could be made by a sufficiently motivated and well-heeled denomination? Episcopalians do not have infinite money (unlike the Mormons), but they could afford an effort consistent with the clear moral and ethical principles Bishop Budde confronted Orange Julius Caesar with. Trumpified evangelicals cannot admit that his executive orders have nothing to do with WWJD? so someone else needs to make the case, literally, for Christian principles.
Power, Little, Little & Little has got to be the funniest name of a law office… 🤣