A teacher at a famous California school is suing his former employer for millions of dollars after he was accused of having sex with a schoolgirl.
Jeremy Taylor, 50, seeks at least $4 million from Oakland School for the Arts – where Zendaya and Alysa Liu attended – four years after he was fired over the allegations.
The girl, then 14, claimed he had groomed her, had sex with her at his house and told her friends details about his private life she would not have picked up in class.
Taylor was quick to tell investigators the details – including that he owned a red truck and lived near a pizza shop – were false, but the school still fired him in 2022.
Three months later he was arrested and Alameda County District Attorney’s Office charged him with abusing the girl.
But over the next three years the case slowly unraveled. After thousands of dollars in legal costs as well as 20 court hearings the DA dropped the charges last March.
The girl also dropped her civil lawsuit against him, despite already making $1.1 million in settlements with the school.
Now Taylor, who still does not have a new job and fears he will never teach again, has filed the lawsuit seeking damages.
He claims Oakland School for the Arts rushed its investigation, ignored flaws in his accuser’s claims and dismissed her history of mental illness.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle: “I’m in a position of having to prove a negative. It’s not enough to be found not guilty or having a case dropped.”
He added in legal documents: “Everyone at OSA and in particular its administration understood that the school would benefit from an opportunity — any opportunity — to recast itself as taking a proactive stand against sexual violence.”
The girl claimed to friends in 2021 that Taylor had sexual relations with her around 10 times when he was her ninth-grade math teacher and he was in his 20s.
The friend then informed cops without telling her, who then got in touch with the school, which had only been founded two years prior to the time of the allegations.
When officers contacted Jane Doe she said she had confided in Taylor about her mom’s substance abuse problems and he had helped her contact Child Protective Services.
She claimed while she was being raised in a foster home she “latched” on to her teacher and he took her away from the school at lunch times.
She alleged they started having sexual relations on pillows in a reading corner of his classroom, before progressing to afternoon trips to his apartment.
Cops and the school cited emails between the pair in their evidence. She wrote in one: “I got a new phone and it’s a flip phone!!! 🙂 so i’m really happy about that, and i get to text message which i didn’t get to do with my old phone.
“I’m not coming to school tomorrow…i have to go to php,” she went on, describing a treatment program for her eating disorder. “But maybe thursday.”
He replied: “Wasn’t your old phone just a regular phone? So, doesn’t this mean that you now have a cell phone (which sounds even more exciting than whether or not it flips)? Either way, good news for you 🙂 Is it pink to match your iPod? I’ll be here Thursday.”
The girl claimed their messages and calls went late into the evening, though her adoptive mother was unsure when questioned if the number on her phone bills was Taylor’s.
An external investigation by the school found her claims were credible. Taylor handed himself into cops on May 27, 2022, after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
He was charged in the July with one felony count of a lewd act with a minor aged 14 or 15. What followed was a three year battle to clear his name.
Finally, in March 2025 the DA dropped the case “based on the review of the discovery, based on conversations with prior DA’s assigned to this case for many years.”
His lawsuit says: “Had even the most basic investigative practices been followed, OSA would have easily discovered the truth — that Mr. Taylor was the victim of a malicious false accusation.”