We have often discussed high school administrators and teachers who engage in censorship and speech regulation, often targeting religious and conservative students. These cases cost school districts millions in court costs, but the school officials never seem to face any consequences. In California, Piner High School has joined this ignoble effort, punishing the high school football captain for expressing support for the “Cornell 7” on his own Instagram page. Other students then protested not to support free speech but to demand further punishment for the student. I wonder where they learned that repressive view of free speech?
According to media reports, the unnamed student wrote “Free the Cornell Seven” on his personal Instagram account and the school called him out. As should be obvious to any teacher or administrator, this is entirely protected speech under the First Amendment. The student was not discussing the school, calling for some school disruption or destruction of property, or encouraging violence. He was stating his view that defendants who have not been tried, let alone convicted, are innocent.
This case has divided the country with many politicians and pundits declaring the guilt of these students before any charges are actually filed against them. A prosecutor previously declined to take the case to a grand jury due to conflict statements from the alleged victim.
Rather than acknowledge the serious free speech concerns raised by the school’s reported actions, Santa Rosa City school’s public information officer, Patrick Gannon, issued a virtue-signaling statement on how it will not tolerate students expressing such thoughts on their personal social media accounts, or presumably publicly in their private time:
“Action was taken by the school and the district, and we’re continuing to have conversations. We don’t tolerate making light of sexual assault. That’s why we have a zero-tolerance policy.”
Whatever success the school has had on basic subjects like English and Math, it has clearly taught the student body to disregard the free speech of others. The football team reportedly forfeited a game after 200 students walked out to the “Santa Rosa City Schools district offices to demand accountability and greater support for students speaking out against sexual violence.”
There was no statement from Principal Andrea Correia or the school denying the reported punishment. Instead, Gannon met with the 200 students and, instead of discussing the importance of free speech and due process, said the school “wants them to know that accountability and safety are top priorities.”
Students are demanding further punishment of the student for expressing his views on the case. Obviously, if the same students had posted “Justice for Jane Doe at Cornell” he would have been celebrated rather than punished.
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.
As we have previously discussed, 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 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.
Judge Karen Nelson Moore joined Sixth Circuit Judge John Nalbandian in a deeply flawed holding that, under the “vulgarity exception,” the action was constitutional. The Supreme Court was asked to hear the “Let’s Go Brandon” case, but recently declined to hear the case. It was a very disappointing denial from the Court for many of us in the free speech community.
In the California case, the underlying law is clear. Any punishment of this student would be a glaring violation of the First Amendment. The student can go to court to have any such actions set aside. However, it is equally clear that the administrators and teachers responsible for such actions will face no accountability.
The “zero tolerance policy” at Piner High School appears to refer to the exercise of free speech by those with unpopular or minority viewpoints. It is certainly a preview of higher education, where viewpoint intolerance and ideological orthodoxy are the norm. This chilling lesson has clearly taken hold at Piner High School.
It’s not like society isn’t aware that women have weaponized the legal system in their conflicts with men, is it. Consider the baseless orders of protection sought to move men out of the home in divorce proceedings. In our attempts to craft the law in order toprotect the weaker sex, a two sided coin,we are hoisted by our own petards.
Waiting patiently until there’s nobody left to protest.
Well, what the kid posted was dumb in this day and age of rage.
But the Cornell 7 do have a right to due process, trial by jury of their peers, and the presumption of innocence. That is the lesson that should be taught in this situation. Point out, objectively, we are a nation of law and order, how the justice system works and not a nation of mob rule.
This is just one more bit of what to any intelligent person should be redundant and superfluous evidence that by far the biggest problem that the people of the US face is excessive, repressive, and authoritarian government, and that the primary symptom of that illness is the public education system, which has been the case for a very, very long time.
Why do so many school administrators and teachers fail to learn? Because education seems to be the sink hole in which the intellectual sludge of our society tends to congregate. Many exceptions thank goodness, but especially not often found in the administrative ranks.
Those who can do. Those who can’t ……teach. Those who can’t teach…… teach teachers. Do not send to know who was elected to your school board. Sent to know who voted. There in lies the rub.
It was bad enough when college students demanded total compliance with their current emotional heat. Now, we have teenybopper rule demanding censorship, aided and abetted by teenybopper school administrators.
In olden times, like just thirty years ago, the posting would have been considered “rude and crude,” and the offending party might have been shunned internally. Then the matter would have vanished within a week or so. Now, it’s in the courts, probably for months or more, with everyone taking an incontrovertible position, making irrevocable claims, and thinking of the matter as nothing short of existential.
I’m wondering … Are the folks who choose to staff government schools as their worklife so insecure in their political beliefs that they are compelled to foist those beliefs on students? Students may not say or write or post anything with which those who run these schools do not agree – at the risk of punishment.
Its Cali Baby – What Did You Expect – the Land of Fruits, Nuts, and Dingle Berries!!! Any dissent is MYSOGONY, RACISM, and COLONIALISM! He/Him/Dude, did not follow the lead of the They/Them/It and thus must be sanctioned for an independent opinion whether based on fact, fiction, or preference. Viva the young Lunatics of Cali! Thank your local ‘teacher’ or is that Comrade?
If we are bothered by this concept of school censorship, be ready for a nation-wide censor board if democrat/islamist/communists ever gain control of any part of our federal government.
I just can’t fathom the depth of ignorance, stubborn and willful blindness and plain lazy brain indoctrination that has been achieved so far with the media/education industry leading the way.
We are lost as a nation and the last bastion of western civilization if we do not stop this ideology in the same manner that Charles Martel stopped the islamists invading France and Jan Sobieski stopped the islamists at the gates of Vienna with his Winged Hussars.
Neither Martel nor Sobieski stopped “Islamists” as understood today, but Moslems, or more accurately Moslem-led forces. Bear in mind that both Moslem armies had Christians in their ranks. El Cid fought as often for Spanish Moslem states as he did for Spanish Christian states. Even the Arab armies that fought for Mohammed and his immediate successors in what is now mislabelled as “The Islamic Conquest” possibly had more Christian and Jewish Arabs in their ranks than Moslems; they were fellow Abrahamic monotheists who had no great argument with Mohammed in theological terms, and the attractions of looting Persians and eastern Romans were very significant.
What if the student had written “Guns Kill”?
not a peep from the inquisition in charge.
Or, what if the student had written “Tawana Brawley and Crystal Mangum are victims of The System”?
If what he wrote was simply, “Free the Cornell Seven”, then it is a massive leap by Turley to claim, “He was stating his view that defendants who have not been tried, let alone convicted, are innocent.” Frankly, in any country other than the USA, there would be no defence of “free speech” for a moronic school pupil facing sanctions for moronic public statements. I was not aware that any of the “Cornell Seven” were detained or incarcerated, so his comment is even more stupid. Funny how he just happens to be an American football player – the cancerous “jock” mentality at play, perchance?