Rennen Dorsey’s high school career was coming to a close, and she didn’t want to shake the Howard County superintendent’s hand.

“No, thank you,” the then-17-year-old said she told former superintendent Michael Martirano seconds after collecting her diploma from the stage of Marriotts Ridge High School’s 2023 commencement ceremony. It was an act of solidarity with her father, a longtime school system administrator who was facing disciplinary action and whose request to present his daughter’s diploma had been denied.

Martirano grabbed Dorsey’s hand and shook it anyway.

The interaction between the matriculating senior and the chief administrator lasted mere seconds, but is the subject of a potentially costly lawsuit pending in Howard County Circuit Court. If the litigation concludes in the graduate’s favor, the public school system could be on the hook for attorney fees and damages, or settlement costs.

Dorsey filed the complaint against Martirano and the Howard County Board of Education on Jan. 10, 2024, the same day the superintendent already planned to leave his job.

The school board abruptly announced Martirano’s retirement in November 2023 but did not give a reason for the departure, which was 18 months into a four-year contract. One of the board members said Martirano had been thinking about retiring. Earlier in the term, some parents had called for his resignation after widespread busing issues stranded thousands of students during the first week of school.

Dorsey’s complaint against Martirano alleges he retaliated against her father and behaved in a “bullying fashion” on one of the biggest days of the teen’s life. It says the superintendent’s actions leading up to and during the ceremony constitute assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

“There was a bullying problem in HCPSS [the Howard County Public School System] during Martirano’s tenure and it started with him,” said Mark J. Muffoletto, the attorney representing Dorsey.

Attorneys for the Board of Education and Martirano have each filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Dorsey wasn’t physically harmed in the incident and the facts of the case don’t meet the legal standards for assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They contend it was common practice for the superintendent to shake each student’s hand and Dorsey did not tell any school staff in advance that she wanted to deviate from the tradition.

The board’s attorney, Suzzanne W. Decker of Miles & Stockbridge, declined to comment Wednesday on the litigation, citing the pending motions. Martirano’s attorneys, Edmund J. O’Meally and Briah M. Gray of Pessin Katz Law, did not respond to messages requesting comment this week.

After Dorsey told Martirano that she didn’t want to shake his hand, he stepped toward her.

“You are not getting away that easy,” the lawsuit claims he said, “I have shaken every graduate’s hand since I have been here.”

The incident played out in front of hundreds of onlookers and was captured in video footage posted on the Howard County Public School System’s YouTube page.

The lawsuit claims Dorsey was forced to shake Martirano’s hand in order to gain passage through the procession. The superintendent was in a position of power and she feared he would physically harm or punish her if she did not acquiesce, Dorsey said in a signed affidavit.

After descending the stage, the suit said the teen broke into tears.

Howard County parents who are employed by the public school system are typically invited to help present their own children with diplomas during graduation. The final minutes of the Marriotts Ridge High School commencement featured proud employees hugging their beaming teens on the stage. Dorsey’s father, Kevin Dorsey, was not among them.

Months earlier in January 2023, four colleagues reported the elder Dorsey, an assistant principal and employee of about 27 years, for having “an odor of alcohol” on him while working at a basketball game between Long Reach and Centennial high schools, according to documents filed with the Maryland State Board of Education.

Kevin Dorsey denied those allegations and has said school system leadership and Martirano had been targeting and harassing him for years, perceiving him to have a disability of alcoholism. He also claimed administrators told him the night of the basketball game that he was not allowed to leave until he called a ride. He filed a civil complaint in Howard County within days of the incident.

A month after the basketball game, Martirano fired Kevin Dorsey for insubordination, misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty. The system stopped paying the assistant principal, but the county Board of Education’s 5-2 vote to formally terminate his employment didn’t come until October 2023.

Dorsey’s lawsuit argues her father still was employed by the school system when she graduated that June.

Records show Kevin Dorsey appealed his termination to the state education board but later withdrew it. A footnote in Dorsey’s complaint mentions the appeal as well as a federal investigation.

Muffoletto, who represents both the father and daughter, declined to comment on the disciplinary dispute.

Kevin Dorsey has since returned to working for the Howard County school system at Lake Elkhorn Middle School, spokesperson Brian Bassett confirmed Wednesday.

The claims against Martirano and the Howard County Board of Education offer an unusual example of how bullying allegations can touch even the highest levels of public education.

Schools in Howard County, a jurisdiction that has long positioned itself as a model of civility, have grappled with other high-profile bullying cases over the years. Maryland lawmakers in 2013 enacted Grace’s Law in an effort to tamp down on cyberbullying. The law was named after Grace McComas, a Glenelg High School sophomore who died by suicide after she was bullied online.

In 2018, four teens at Glenelg High were charged with hate crimes after spray-painting racist graffiti — some of which targeted the principal, who was Black — and swastikas on school grounds.

Amid one of the most intense moments of Howard County’s pandemic-related school closures, Martirano sharply rebuked adults for the online bullying of the school board’s only student member. Howard High School senior Zach Koung’s adult counterparts on the board had deadlocked on contentious decisions about virtual learning, leaving him to cast the deciding votes.

During the final school board meeting of 2020, Martirano labeled the bullying “reprehensible” and said he considered it his job to speak out against the behavior.

“We, as Howard County residents, should be mortified that a community that prides itself on civility has neighbors that would stoop low to harass any person, but particularly a student, in order to silence their voice.”