Texas City Settles Suit Filed by Former Joplin City Manager

A Houston-area city has agreed to pay $145,000 to settle a free-speech lawsuit with its former city manager who took the job after he was fired from the southwest Missouri city of Joplin after a deadly tornado.

The Joplin Globe reports that Mark Rohr was hired in League City, Texas, in 2014. The Joplin City Council fired him in a split vote after an investigator’s report described him as a vindictive manager who couldn’t get along with department heads.

In 2016 he was fired from his League City post after he filed ethics complaints against the mayor. Rohr alleged in a federal lawsuit that his firing was an attempt to “chill” his speech.

Rohr was hired last month as city manager for the city of Marshall, Texas.