Former Woodbury High girls' basketball coach wins defamation lawsuit against parent

A fired Woodbury High School girls' basketball coach has won his reputation back, eight years after filing a defamation lawsuit claiming a disgruntled parent's lies cost him his coaching job and imperiled his career as a kindergarten teacher.

"It's been hard for me to swallow, being a member of this district for 23 years and having one person torpedo everything," Nathan McGuire said Tuesday of his long ordeal. "Hopefully, this will prevent other coaches from [experiencing] similar situations."

Just as jury selection was about to begin Monday in Washington County District Court, defendant Julie Bowlin agreed to settle the case, handing over a $50,000 life insurance policy and signing a three-page letter detailing the lies she had spread about McGuire.

McGuire's attorney, Donald Chance Mark Jr., said his client will attach Bowlin's letter to applications for coaching jobs — ideally in the South Washington County Schools district where he teaches.

Long before the settlement, the case had led to a landmark ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2019 that high school coaches aren't public figures under the First Amendment, so parents aren't protected when making false claims against them.

The court said decisions about playing time and benching players aren't protected because they're not core functions of government. "Simply, basketball is not fundamental to democracy," the ruling said.

The saga started more than a decade ago in Richfield, where Bowlin's daughter played for McGuire as a seventh-grader during the 2011-12 school year at the Academy of Holy Angels. In 2013, Bowlin's daughter — then a freshman — followed McGuire to Woodbury High School.

But Bowlin, who is 55 and now lives in Chanhassen, became angry after a preseason scrimmage because McGuire wouldn't guarantee her daughter varsity playing time. Even though her daughter never played a game and left Woodbury High in December 2013, Bowlin — by her own admission — pressed on with her campaign against McGuire. She told at least one person she planned to "take down" McGuire, the suit said.

As part of the settlement, Bowlin signed a three-page "To Whom It May Concern" letter that announces itself as an "admission" of her role in McGuire's "wrongful termination" as the Woodbury girls' basketball coach. The letter details her lies.

She acknowledges in the letter that she wrongly told the Woodbury High School Athletic Club Boosters in November 2013 that McGuire had been "terminated" from Holy Angels and that parents had brought complaints against him.

Bowlin also admits falsely accusing McGuire of bullying, pushing, harassment, manipulation, aggression and inappropriate touching at Woodbury and Holy Angels.

She says she continued her campaign against McGuire in 2014, when she recruited other parents to sign complaints pushing for a state Department of Education investigation into his work as a kindergarten teacher.

"Even getting my coaching job wasn't enough for her, she went after my teaching career," McGuire said in an interview. He has been a kindergarten teacher in the same district since 1999 without any complaints.

When on Jan. 8, 2014, McGuire was suspended from coaching basketball in the Woodbury schools, Bowlin admits to sending him a text that said: "Too bad you didn't coach tonight."

Two months later, Woodbury High declined to renew McGuire's coaching contract. Bowlin admits that in August 2014, she falsely told another parent that McGuire could lose his teaching job because he "was recently put in jail" for his treatment of girls' basketball players.

The case has dragged on for years in part because Bowlin is in the middle of her third bankruptcy filing. Mark said the court found that she had lied about McGuire "with malice," so the financial judgment against her won't be dismissed by the bankruptcy court.

If Bowlin fails to make the payments from the insurance policy, a judgment of $350,000 will be entered against her, Mark said.

"It should be a warning for parents everywhere if you go to this extreme, you're going to pay a price," Mark said.

Bowlin's attorney, Timothy Alan O'Brien, did not return a request for comment.

After Bowlin's allegations, McGuire was allowed to continue coaching junior high volleyball and track for a couple of years in the Woodbury schools. He also coached girls' basketball at South High School in Minneapolis for several years.

However, when he applied in 2019 for an assistant basketball coaching job at Woodbury's East Ridge High School, he was told he was banned from the district where he lives and works.

McGuire has applied for multiple coaching jobs in the east metro, but Mark said he "can't even get an interview; they won't even talk to him based on what this woman said, wrote and did."

As McGuire walked out of the courtroom Monday, he said, he turned to his wife and voiced his hope that Woodbury administrators would take another look at what he has to offer and decide they "would like Coach McGuire to coach in our district again."

Said Mark: "It's been a long journey, but it's not over. Part of my goal is to get him back coaching."