Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner claimed she warned administrators at Richneck Elementary School multiple times on Jan. 6 that one of her 6-year-old students had a gun on him. He shot Zwerner later that day and left her wounded. She later sued Newport News Public Schools for allegedly ignoring her calls for help to prevent any violence. Now, the school district is working to have her $40 million lawsuit dismissed.

The Newport News School Board filed a motion in court yesterday (April 26) claiming that Zwerner’s issue falls under the state’s workers’ compensation act. As a result, it can’t be solved with her lawsuit against them. Its reasoning is that Zwerner was “clearly injured while at work, at her place of employment, by a student in the classroom,” according to The Associated Press.

It also pushed back on the teacher’s claim that she should be able to work with young children without expecting to be put in any danger, citing violent instances against teachers both locally and across the country. “While in an ideal world, young children would not pose any danger to others, including their teachers, this is sadly not reality,” the filing stated.

“The fact that the student used a gun as opposed to stabbing with a pair of scissors or throwing a textbook at a teacher‘s head does not change this basic fact,” one of their lawyers said, per NBC News. “We are asking the court to hold that since Ms. Zwerner suffered a workplace injury, this case falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Workers’ Compensation Commission and not the Newport News Circuit Court.”

The educator filed a negligence lawsuit against the school district on April 3. After doing so, her attorney, Jeffrey Breit, stood behind the decision to not file her complaint as a workers’ compensation claim under Virginia law, seeing as workers theoretically can’t sue their own employers.

“[This is] an exception,” he told NBC. “No 6-year-old student is going to be a risk of shooting their teacher.” He pointed out that teachers being prepared to be shot is “not part of their job” and insisted that his client is “not a night 7-Eleven worker.”