Below is my column in The Hill on the recent significant victory for free speech out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It is a story of how this little first-grade girl schooled her principal and a federal judge on the essence of free speech.

Here is the column:

In March 2021, California principal Jesus Becerra was confronted by a clear and present threat to his school.

Standing before him was the culprit — a student apparently so dangerous that Becerra had to act without delay to protect the entire Viejo Elementary School in the Capistrano Unified School District.

The little girl is known only as B.B. in federal filings, but her actions were so heinous that a parent alerted Becerra to take whatever action was necessary.

Beccera showed B.B. the incriminating evidence: a picture of children with the words “any life” written under “Black Lives Matter.”

Confronting the little girl, Becerra allegedly called the paper “racist.” He told her that she would need to apologize for the outrageous statement. (Becerra denies using the word “racist.”). Her family alleges that she was also suspended from recess for two weeks, apparently to consider her failures as a human being.

B.B. had just sat through a book reading about Martin Luther King. It ended with “Black Lives Matter,” an expression that she had never previously heard. She felt bad that black people in the book were shown as being treated differently and unfairly. She decided to draw a picture of her friends holding hands under those words with the addition of “any life.” She gave the picture to one of those friends, a girl known in the litigation as M.C.

Throughout history, friends have given each other such notes and pictures without incident. But in these times, an array of adults felt the need to intervene, to make sure the girls understood that this innocent act was actually a despicable act of latent racism.

When M.C. brought the picture home, her mother was upset. M.C. is the only black student in the class and B.B. is white. She wrote to Becerra to object that “while we can appreciate the sentiment of Black Lives Matter, my husband and I do not trust the place ‘any life’ is coming from.” She did not want this to become a “larger issue” but asked Becerra to take the “actions that need to be taken to address the issue.”

Becerra allegedly demanded that B.B apologize and then suspended her from recess. B.B. did not tell her mother, Chelsea Boyle, about the incident or the alleged punishment for eleven months. But then the family moved to address the matter. They faced an array of administrators and lawyers who fought them at every stage. The school denied that the punishment had even happened, asserting that “the weight of evidence” did not support the claim that the little girl had been punished in any way.

Ultimately, the case made its way before federal District Court Judge David Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee. The school demanded summary judgment. Even though a court at that stage must assume all disputed facts in the most favorable way for the nonmoving party (B.B. in this case), Carter held that she could indeed be punished for writing those two words, “any life.”

Judge Carter declared that B.B.’s drawing was “not protected under the First Amendment” and that teachers like Becerra “are far better equipped than federal courts at identifying when speech crosses the line from harmless banter to impermissible harassment.” Besides, Carter added, “the downsides of regulating speech there is not as significant as it is in high schools, where students are approaching voting age and controversial speech could spark conducive conversation.”

In Judge Carter’s world, there is little danger that elementary students are likely to develop a taste for free speech, let alone contemplate its use. (Judge Carter had shown equally dismissive views of free speech in a controversial ruling related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.)

And so B.B. apparently got what she deserved as a little harasser, roaming the halls of Viejo Elementary School with her hateful box of crayons.

Fortunately, however, with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the parents appealed Judge Carter’s chilling opinion. Last week, they won a major free speech victory before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In 1969, the Supreme Court famously declared that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” However, since that iconic case, federal courts have often given short shrift to the free speech rights of students.

Teachers around the country have become notorious as speech commissars who bar expressions deemed divisive or intolerant. That often includes any conservative or religious speech.

An elementary school in Kansas came under fire recently after Arbor Creek Elementary Principal Melissa Snell stopped the wearing of shirts reading “Freedom,” which became popular after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In another case, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Boyko ruled in Ohio that students could be barred from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts — a coded political expression criticizing the media and former President Joe Biden. Other courts have also upheld such censorship by teachers, who claim that the expression is a substitute for a vulgar expression chanted by crowds (“F— Joe Biden”). But these shirts do not contain vulgarity. Rather, the expression is used as a defiant reference to the media bias that led to the original substitution of the words, allegedly to protect Biden — it is a “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.

In these cases, judges also wrote opinions upholding the arbitrary censorship of words by school administrators, who often show greater tolerance for progressive political expression.

In this case, however, the Ninth Circuit broke from these ranks in defending this little girl.

The panel (composed of Judges Consuelo Callahan, a George W. Bush appointee, and Roopali Desai and Ana de Alba, Biden appointees) ruled that just being in elementary school does not mean that B.B. has no meaningful free speech rights. A school, they found, “may restrict students’ speech only when the restriction is reasonably necessary to protect the safety and well-being of its students.”

B.B. will now have the opportunity denied by Judge Carter: to prove that giving a friend a picture celebrating all lives is not a threat to “the safety and well-being” of the entire Viejo Elementary School. Ironically, the school has taught its students an invaluable lesson: They have the right to speak and should never allow others to silence them arbitrarily. This first-grader prevailed over administrators, teachers, lawyers, and a federal judge who saw little “downside” in censoring her.

I doubt it is a lesson that will take. Perhaps the girl, by now probably a middle schooler, should draw a picture of Principal Becerra, Judge Carter, and others holding hands with the expression, “We all can speak.”

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”