Secretary Marcia Fudge has withdrawn from being the 2024 graduation speaker for Shaker Heights High School, according to a statement from the district.
Friday afternoon, the district said its superintendent, Dr. David Glasner, approved of Fudge's withdrawal, which came soon after some Shaker Heights High School alumni questioned the district's decision to invite her as a speaker.
The district did not provide the reasoning behind Fudge's withdrawal.
The concerns from alumni stem from a letter Fudge wrote in 2015 on behalf of former Ohio State Senator and Cuyahoga County Judge Lance Mason, who at the time was facing sentencing for brutally beating his then-wife Aisha Fraser in front of the couples' children.
Watch previous coverage of the concerns from Shaker Heights alumni in the player below:
RELATED: 'Tone deaf': Some question Shaker High's choice of commencement speaker
At the time, Fraser was a sixth-grade teacher at Woodbury Elementary in Shaker Heights.
In Fudge's letter to the prosecutor, she said Mason was a "good man who made an honest mistake."
Mason was released from prison early, and in 2018, he murdered Fraser.
