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“If the city can treat me like this, then they can do it to anybody,” Bird told Patch. “Evanston has a history of this, and it’s unacceptable.”

According to Bird’s 11-page complaint, he had made several posts on his personal social media accounts expressing sympathy with Palestinians, both before and after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.

On Oct. 10, Stowe told senior staff he planned to place tiny Israeli flags around the Evanston Civic Center, according to the suit.

Bird later emailed him to suggest it was “important we both support the people of Israel as well as Palestinian people who are both caught in a war beyond their control.” In his email, Bird noted that the area has a large Palestinian-American community and said city officials “should make sure to express solidarity and affirm the great challenges both are facing at this time.”

Bird also expressed concern for Palestinian civilians in an informal personal discussion with Alison Leipsiger, a longtime staffer for Biss who was placed on the city payroll in a newly created position of policy coordinator.

Leipsiger, who has a pinned post that says “Stop killing Black people” on one of her own social media accounts, allegedly told Bird that his views were ignorant and had been swayed by “Hamas propaganda.”

“Given his social media posts, his email to Stowe and his comments to Leipsiger, Bird was a ‘dead man walking’, though he didn’t know it at the time,” according to the complaint. “[Biss, Stowe and Ruggie] realized that the optics of firing Evanston’s Black face of DEI over ‘progressive’ social media posts would be problematic, but they had a plan.”

Bird’s equity manager position was created following the open letter and action plan crafted in late 2022 by a group of more than two dozen Black city employees who asserted that the city has “a problem with presenting an equitable workplace for marginalized employees.”

Back in 2017, city officials created the position of equity and empowerment coordinator and hired Patricia Efiom for the job. She stepped down in 2020 due to illness and died the following year.

But city officials never hired another person for role. Instead, they created what would become Bird’s position two years later, only after complaints of an inequitable environment from Black employees were made public.

Following his hiring, Bird led a self-selected committee of city staff to promote racial equity, served as the liaison to the Black employees group and developed an equity framework to train senior staff.

That training wound up being canceled. But it had been due to take place Nov. 29 — the day before a controversial special meeting of the city’s Equity and Empowerment Commission to discuss a proposed resolution declaring the city’s support for a ceasefire in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a return of hostages held by the US-designated terror group and an end to the Israeli military’s collective punishment of Palestinians.

Members of the commission, for which Bird was the staff liaison, are appointed by the mayor and have no authority other than to publish an annual report and make non-binding suggestions to the City Council.

Nonetheless, the meeting provoked strong opinions from both supporters and opponents of the proposed resolution, with more than 120 people signing up to speak at the meeting before the resolution was withdrawn from consideration.

Ruggie, the city’s top attorney, opined that it would be out of order for the City Council to ever approve such a resolution because it fell outside the purpose of the commission as laid out in the City Code.

Following the meeting, 3rd Ward resident Greg Miller filed a complaint with the Evanston Ethics Board alleging that the volunteer commission misappropriated public funds and “breached professional ethics” by drafting the resolution.

Bird said city officials referenced an ethics complaint when placing him on leave but Stowe and Ruggie did not cite it as a reason when they fired him over video-teleconferencing software less than four weeks later.

“Is this about the meeting?” Bird asked, according to his complaint.

“It has nothing to do with the meeting,” Stowe responded.

Ruggie then allegedly offered Bird the chance to receive six weeks pay as severance if he agreed to sign away his right to sue. Bird refused.

Paul Vickrey, Bird’s attorney, has experience in First Amendment retaliation cases.

Vickrey previously represented three former Lake County employees who said they were filed by Lake County Circuit Court Clerk Erin Cartwright Weinstein in 2016 because they campaigned for her Republican opponent in that year’s election. He took the case to trial, and a federal jury awarded more than $2.6 million to the employees for lost wages and punitive damages.

In Bird’s case, Vickrey said it was difficult to pin down precisely which protected speech led to his termination, but it was clear that Biss got political mileage out of making him the scapegoat.

“Liam’s an easy target because the social media posts that he’s putting up happen to dovetail precisely with the very resolution that’s at issue — even though they know he didn’t draft it, he didn’t propose it, he didn’t endorse it at the [commission] meeting,” Vickrey told Patch.

“But in the fallout, he’s an easy mark because he has actually posted on publicly accessible social media the call for a ceasefire several days before the meeting.”

City officials have declined to comment on the merits of the case but pledged to “vigorously defend” against allegations it violated First Amendment free speech protections.

Bird, who previously worked as the director of racial equality initiative for Chicago Public Schools, said he had never previously faced treatment like he did in Evanston. At every prior role, he said, he had been promoted, given additional responsibility and changed policies.

“I have been asked to sit on state boards, federal boards including the White House’s Reach Higher initiative,” he said. “So I have a whole lot of connections that relate to policy, equity, education, government, and I’ve been doing this work for a long time never had any kind of issue anywhere, so this is a big setback for me.”

Prior to 2022 revelations from Black employees that prompted Stowe’s office to hire the consultancy GovHR to conduct a “Human Resources Equity Assessment” and create Bird’s manager of organizational performance and equity position, prior city managers have also faced allegations of racial discrimination.

In 2017, the City Council authorized a $500,000 settlement payment to former employee Suzette Robinson, who accused longtime City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz of a “campaign of harassment and retaliation” after she criticized his treatment of Black employees and residents during a performance evaluation.

Bird, who said he was aware of the complaints from Black employees when he took the job, described his firing as a direct continuation of what has happened in Evanston in the past.

“It’s the next chapter of racial inequity,” he said. “Even though it’s a First Amendment retaliation, I’m a Black person, the head of DEI with a long history of doing this work, not just in Chicago, but around the country, and so they’re attacking, essentially, the racial equity movement.”

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