There are so many stories documenting how the authoritarian left is seeking to infringe on our rights that it’s good when we can see their efforts fail. This is especially true when it comes to efforts to attack free speech.
Moms for Liberty in Brevard County, Florida, along with individual plaintiffs, have won a lawsuit against Brevard Public Schools and specific school board members. The court ruled that the district violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights when it interrupted, silenced, or removed them for making comments the district labeled as “abusive,” “personally directed,” or “obscene.”
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that these restrictions violated the First Amendment because the district enforced them arbitrarily and inconsistently, reversing a ruling in favor of the district from a lower court.
Moms for Liberty, along with individual parents with children in the school district, argued that the school board’s prohibition on “abusive” speech was unconstitutional because it was enforced based on the content of the speech and singled out particular viewpoints.
The plaintiffs said Misty Haggard-Belford, chair of the Brevard County School Board “interrupted a speaker who criticized the Board’s Covid-19 masking policy as a ‘simple ploy to silence our opposition to this evil LGBTQ agenda.’”
The school board member indicated it would “prohibit calling people ‘names that are generally accepted to be unacceptable.’”
The lawsuit also challenged a rule preventing speakers at school board meetings from addressing individual board members or mentioning others by name, arguing that it was applied inconsistently.
The lawsuit alleged:
“Speakers were allowed to address Board members by name to give them thanks and praise, but at another meeting, Belford cut off a Moms for Liberty member who tried to personally thank a Board member."
Belford had argued that the “applicability of the policy ‘would depend on the circumstances,’” suggesting that only positive comments about an individual would be allowed.
The school board also applied its rule against “obscene” speech in a biased fashion as well, according to the plaintiffs:
Instead, the Board used its obscenity policy to bar protected speech, and it did so in a way that impeded the purpose of a school board meeting. During the incident Moms for Liberty cites, a member shared her concern that her child’s elementary school library contained inappropriate books. She began reading one, which detailed an in-school sexual encounter:
I tiptoed toward the door, peering through the window at the boy’s pants around his ankles squeezed between April’s straddled legs as she lay on the teacher’s desk. I swung the door open letting a soft light from the hallway shine a spotlight on them.
‘Sh*t!’ he muttered.
The lawsuit stated that Belford interrupted the mother when she said the word “sh*t.”
“Describing the content of a book is not as potent as reading its words—nor is it as informative. The board’s prohibition on obscene speech is therefore unconstitutional as applied,” the plaintiffs asserted.
The appeals court found that the enforcement of these policies was inconsistent and unconstitutional, and violated the First Amendment. It also agreed that the plaintiffs had essentially been forced to censor themselves because of the unpredictable and capricious enforcement of the policies.
The court also ruled that the term “abusive” was overly vague and arbitrary in its application. This allowed the school board to silence speakers based on personal feelings about what was considered offensive or inappropriate. One of the judges noted that “the Board’s policy on ‘abusive’ speech is facially unconstitutional because it operated to prohibit speech purely because it disparages or offends.”
Similarly, the court took the same approach to the board’s rule against “personally directed” speech, declaring that it is unconstitutional because of its inconsistent enforcement. In some cases, speakers were allowed to address individual board members by name while others were shut down for doing the same – especially if their comments were critical. “Permitting certain speech on some days and not on others without any credible explanation of what may have changed is the essence of arbitrary, capricious, and haphazard—and therefore unreasonable—decisionmaking,” one of the judges pointed out.
Lastly, the court found that the prohibition on supposed “obscene” speech was also applied unconstitutionally – especially when it was used to stop a speaker from reading from a school library book. Discussions surrounding the content of publicly available books are a matter of public concern, according to the court.
This is a great victory not only for Moms for Liberty, but for free speech. All across the country, parents have complained at school board and city council meetings about inappropriate material being presented to small children in government-run schools. In many cases, they have been shut down, which has promoted a series of court battles.
The appeals court’s ruling upholds the First Amendment and speech in public forums. School boards should not be allowed to shut down speakers based on political concerns, especially using arbitrary and inconsistently applied rules. Hopefully, we will see more of this in districts across the country.
