Doug and Nicole Turpin had two children enrolled at Charlotte Latin School, a private school in North Carolina. According to their complaint, the School began changing its curriculum and approach to issues involving race and gender identity during the 2020-2021 school year, including by teaching their sixth-grade child allegedly polarizing concepts such as “Republicans are white supremacists” and reading books on sexuality and gender that they alleged were not age-appropriate. The Turpins disagreed with some of those changes and joined other parents in forming an informal group called “Refocus Latin,” which sought to raise concerns with School leadership about the School’s curriculum and culture.
Members of Refocus Latin eventually met with the School’s Board of Trustees. The Turpins alleged that before and during the meeting, trustees repeatedly assured participating parents that they would not face retaliation for raising concerns. After the presentation, however, the School informed the group that administrators and trustees would not engage in further group discussions and directed parents to address concerns about their own children individually with administrators.
The Turpins subsequently requested an individual meeting and specifically expressed concern that their child might experience “blowback” because they were raising concerns. A School administrator responded that the School’s teachers did not retaliate and assured them that “there will be no blowback.” A few days later, Doug Turpin met with the Head of School and Head of Middle School. During the meeting, the Head of School accused Turpin and other Refocus Latin parents of presenting materials stating that students and faculty of color were not qualified to be at the School. According to the complaint, the parents’ presentation contained no such statement. The Head of School then informed Turpin that the School was immediately terminating both children’s enrollment agreements.
The School’s enrollment agreement incorporated a parent-school partnership provision stating that a “positive, collaborative working relationship” between the School and parents was essential to the School’s mission. Under that provision, the School reserved the right to discontinue enrollment if it concluded that a parent’s actions made such a relationship “impossible” or “seriously interfere[d]” with the School’s mission.
The Turpins sued, asserting numerous claims. The trial court dismissed virtually all the claims, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals largely affirmed. The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed in part, concluding that the Turpins sufficiently pleaded claims for breach of contract, fraud, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and defamation.
On the breach of contract claim, the Supreme Court focused on the language of the enrollment agreement. Although the agreement gave Charlotte Latin considerable discretion to discontinue enrollment, that discretion was expressly tied to two conditions: the School had to conclude that the parents’ actions either made a positive, collaborative relationship impossible or seriously interfered with its mission. The Turpins alleged that neither condition existed and that the School knowingly invoked those contractual grounds as a false pretext for terminating enrollment for some other reason. Charlotte Latin acknowledged during the litigation that the termination provision could not be invoked as a pretext or in bad faith. The Court therefore concluded that the parents had adequately stated a breach claim and were entitled to proceed to discovery regarding the School’s actual reasons for terminating enrollment.
The Court also permitted the Turpins’ fraud claim to proceed based on the School’s “no blowback” assurance. The parents alleged that School officials already intended to terminate their children’s enrollment when they promised there would be no blowback, and that the promise was designed to induce Turpin to attend the meeting so the School could create a purported justification for ending the students’ enrollment. The Court stressed that proving this theory would be difficult, but under North Carolina’s liberal notice-pleading standard, the allegations were sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.
Finally, the Court revived the parents’ defamation claims arising from the School’s communications about the Refocus Latin presentation. After terminating the enrollments, the School allegedly told its community that the parents had asserted that diverse students and faculty “have not earned their positions and honors” and suggested that students and faculty of color were less qualified than their white counterparts. The presentation, however, criticized the School’s use of DEI goals and race-conscious criteria in admissions and hiring and advocated for a return to what the parents characterized as merit-based decision-making. The Supreme Court held that these were not necessarily equivalent statements: criticizing race-conscious admissions or hiring practices does not, by itself, amount to saying that individuals who may have benefited from those practices are underqualified.
The Court also distinguished between expressing an opinion that someone is “racist” and falsely attributing a specific racist statement to that person. Whether the parents actually said that students and faculty of color had not earned their positions was objectively verifiable and therefore potentially actionable as defamation. And although the School’s communication did not identify the Turpins by name, the Court held they had sufficiently alleged that the statements concerned them because they belonged to the relatively small, identifiable group of parents that prepared and presented the materials.
The Supreme Court therefore reversed the dismissal of these claims and remanded for further proceedings.
Turpin v. Charlotte Latin Schs., Inc. (Aug. 14, 2026) 2026 LX 490179.
Note:
LCW has covered this case . Schools should exercise caution before communicating details about a dispute with a parent or family to the broader school community. In addition to potential defamation claims where a communication inaccurately attributes statements or conduct to a parent, California’s strong privacy protections provide an additional reason to limit communications to only information that is truly necessary and appropriate to share.