NATCHEZ — The superintendent and assistant superintendent of the Natchez-Adams School District have asked the federal courts to either toss out the jury verdict against them or at least grant them a new trial.

The verdict — that Superintendent Frederick Hill and Assistant Superintendent Tanisha Smith racially discriminated against a former principal and forced her into retirement — was handed down in September.

The final judgment on the case was issued in January, giving plaintiff Cindy Idom $668,000 in back pay, damages and legal fees, of which $75,000 were assessed against hill and $25,000 against Smith.

If the court will not grant the request for judgment as a matter of law — essentially to throw it out — or to grant a new trial, the defendants asked that the court consider lowering the amount of damages.

Idom — who is white — successfully argued with the court that race was a factor in creating a hostile working environment for her over the course of a work year before she was called into Hill’s office and told to take a demotion or resign.

Idom had been a principal for 11 years to that point and chose to retire rather than take the demotion, but the court considered the retirement a “constructive discharge.”

Hill and Smith are black, and Idom testified there were a number of instances in which black principals were not disciplined for alleged infractions white principals were.

The school district administrators denied all of her charges.

The new filing says the evidence does not fit the verdict, saying, “The overwhelming weight of the evidence … demonstrates that plaintiff did not believe she was dismissed, terminated or constructively discharged because plaintiff marked ‘retirement’ as her reason for resigning. Plaintiff had the opportunity to mark whether she felt constructively discharged or terminated. She did neither.”

The filing also says the case failed to prove racial discrimination, saying the “plaintiff herself could not state that race was a factor in her alleged constructive discharge. If the plaintiff herself could not state that race was a factor, then the evidence certainly did not justify such a finding and the verdict is against the overwhelming weight of the evidence.”

The superintendent’s motion also cites late disclosures and supplements to depositions by the plaintiff made after the trial discovery period had closed, saying the defendants didn’t have sufficient time to prepare to rebut the claims. It likewise says jury instructions were incomplete.

“On several occasions, the court observed three jurors sleeping, which highly prejudiced (the defendants’) right to a fair trial,” it says, later calling the compensatory damages against Hill and Smith, “based upon speculation, conjecture, and guesswork” because “there was a lack of competent evidence to demonstrate that plaintiff suffered emotional pain, mental anguish or any related tangible injury to support an award of $100,000.”

The jury that ruled against the school district was composed of three black women, two black men and three white men.