BROWNSBURG, Ind. — Two cafeteria workers and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed a federal lawsuit against an Indiana school district alleging that their First Amendment rights were violated.

The suit, filed Oct. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, says Tina Gracey and Brenda Farnsworth were reprimanded and threatened with the loss of their jobs after they joined a Facebook group called “Brownsburg Residents for Fiscal Responsibility.” That group opposed district building referendums that were defeated in a May 2015 election, according to a statement from the ACLU. Gracey and Farnsworth regularly expressed opinions in the group through posts and comments over a period of several months in the spring and summer.

Dr. Jim Snapp, superintendent of the Brownsburg Community School Corporation, told the area’s Hendricks County Flyer that the school district has yet to receive an official notification of the lawsuit from the ACLU or the court.

He called the information contained in the ACLU’s statement “one-sided and incomplete.”

The ACLU is regularly involved in court action on a variety of education and First Amendment issues, including a suit filed last month in Nevada seeking to overturn the state’s new school voucher law; a 2013 suit against a Florida school board for preventing middle school students from forming a gay-straight alliance club to fight bullying; and a 2010 case in which a Pennsylvania woman sued her former high school claiming school officials violated her privacy and free speech rights when they confiscated her cell phone and turned it over to authorities.

In the Indiana case, the ACLU calls the social media policy of the Brownsburg Community School Corporation “a gross violation of the public employees’ right to free speech, using their own devices on their own time,” according to ACLU communications and education director Kelly Jones Sharp.

The school corporation’s social media policy says “online behavior should reflect the same standards of honesty, respect, and consideration that you use face-to-face.”

It further states that if the school “believes that an employee’s activity on a social networking site, blog, cell phone, or personal website may violate” the policies listed, the school corporation “may request that the employee cease such activity.”

In the lawsuit, Gracey and Farnsworth allege that the school took unconstitutional disciplinary action against them. Both received “a written reprimand from the School Corporation and were informed that similar comments in the future would subject them to termination,” according to the suit.

“We are keenly aware of employees’ First Amendment freedom of speech rights,” Snapp said.

He added that all policies are reviewed by the school corporation’s attorneys who recommend policies that meet legal requirements.

The two workers want the discipline action against them expunged from their records and the social policy changed, Jones Sharp said.

The Avon (Indiana) Hendricks County Flyer contributed to this story.