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A federal court order against the Pennsbury School District for curtailing public comments that officials deemed abusive or irrelevant has districts across the region reconsidering how theyll handle heated or hateful speech during school board meetings a regular phenomenon in some communities over the last year.

The order, issued by U.S. District Judge Gene Pratter, came in response to a lawsuit filed Oct. 1 by four residents in the Bucks County district who said their comments were censored, limited, or disrupted by the board, largely as they questioned its equity initiatives.

The First Amendment protections for free speech apply to speaking at public school board meetings, Pratter said in an opinion accompanying her Nov. 17 order, which granted a preliminary injunction against the district but hasnt settled the case.

She agreed that Pennsburys policies prohibiting certain comments including those considered personally directed, offensive, abusive, and irrelevant appeared to be vague and overbroad, and directed the district to stop enforcing them.

Many area school boards have a similar policy in place, modeled after a template recommended by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, and those boards are going to have to suspend it, said Jeffrey Sultanik, a solicitor for multiple Philadelphia-area districts.

While the Pennsbury order applies only to that district, it could be cited in lawsuits against other school boards. And Pennsbury says it plans to appeal which could lead to a decision that would be binding on all school systems within the nine counties of the federal courts Eastern District. In the meantime, Annette Stevenson, a spokesperson for the school boards association, said its model policy was currently under review but declined to comment further.

The Pennsbury school board is proud of its work during its meetings to ensure all children in the district have equal opportunity to an excellent education, and that work will continue, said spokesperson Jen Neill. The district welcomes the input of its stakeholders in a productive, respectful manner as a way to achieve this goal.

Among the residents who brought the lawsuit was Simon Campbell, a former Pennsbury school board member who said that the country was founded by disruptive, disrespectful people. He and fellow plaintiffs were represented by the Institute for Free Speech, which called the order a wakeup for school boards across America. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit is also representing members of the Moms for Liberty group in a similar case against Floridas Brevard County School Board.

Pennsburys board garnered broad attention this summer after a fiery speech by Campbell accusing the board of censorship including calling its president Benito Mussolini went viral. The president, Christine Toy-Dragoni, said she received death and rape threats that escalated with the national attention.

Some thought last months court decision could stoke more antagonism.

It has the potential to make public comment more disrespectful, said Kenneth Roos, another local school district solicitor, though he added that being recorded during meetings hopefully ... is a disincentive to people to behave in an egregious or inappropriate way.

In Central Bucks, school board member Karen Smith saw Pratters order as like putting gasoline on a fire at this point.

At that boards last meeting, some public comments drew outrage including one suggesting ties between Jews and organized crime and calling for a stand against Zionism and communism, and another worrying that transgender students had the right to rape girls in the womens bathroom.

Smith interjected during that latter comment, calling out, Thats enough. But the board president, Dana Hunter, allowed the commenter to continue noting that this is his three minutes.

Smith said her reaction grew out of an accumulation of comments during past meetings targeting transgender people. We dont have that many of these students, but its very difficult for them, she said. The boards policy would have justified ending the comments, she said, but now we cant do anything.

Smith and three other members of the nine-member board released a statement after the meeting condemning the comments. The board meets again with newly elected members on Monday.

Tina Stoll, the school board president in North Penn, said her board has been advised that it can respond to comments that may be hateful maybe not get into it tit-for-tat but make clear the board doesnt endorse such speech.

We cant grab the mic, or cut them off, or anything. Frankly, I think thats sometimes what they want to get the attention, said Stoll, whose board has hosted tense meetings, particularly around masking.

When people have leveled accusations against board members, theyve been permitted to speak: Stoll said: Weve always said, Thank you for your comment. Next.

Some have sought to limit the role of board members in policing public comment. In West Chester where school board president Chris McCune took the microphone this summer from a woman whose time limit expired as she was demanding to know whether the district taught critical race theory the district had its solicitor start attending meetings and enforce the limits.

In Philadelphia, the ACLU sued the district in March on behalf of two community groups alleging a new policy limiting the number of people who could comment at meetings prevented meaningful participation.

The Pennsbury parents lawsuit focused in part on actions by the districts solicitor, Peter Amuso. During a May board meeting, Amuso cut off three men who had begun to criticize the districts equity policy. One had said that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts were based on a predetermined narrative, ignoring, for example, that first-generation Nigerian immigrants excel.

Youre done! Amuso shouted at each of the men, calling their comments irrelevant.

That meeting followed controversy around the districts handling of public comments at its March meeting. The man who spoke about Nigerian immigrants, Doug Marshall, also one of the plaintiffs in the censorship lawsuit, at the March meeting had questioned equity efforts while explaining the history of racial problems in the country.

Marshall wasnt interrupted that night. But at the urging of the districts equity and diversity director, the board later struck his remarks from a video recording of the meeting, issuing a statement that the comments escalated from expressing a viewpoint to expressing beliefs and ideas that were abusive and coded in racist terms, also known as dog whistles.

In her opinion, Pratter, while not calling Marshalls comments offensive, wrote that the First Amendment protects offensive speakers, and said censorship of comments deemed racist by the district was impermissible viewpoint discrimination.

She didnt agree with the districts argument that not enforcing its policies would lead to violence calling the claim deliberately provocative. She noted the board could call police if a speaker threatens violence, a policy the plaintiffs didnt challenge.

They also didnt challenge a ban on obscene comments. And while Pennsbury can no longer prohibit personally directed comments, lawyers say that doesnt mean school boards have to allow speakers to target a board members family or other personal characteristics only their role in the district.

Sultanik said the decision could be viewed optimistically, as an invitation for tolerance of another viewpoint that you might find personally offensive.

But in a time of heightened animosity and polarization and the potential for another round of contentious board meetings while the future of Pennsylvanias school-masking order is up in the air that might not be realistic, Sultanik said.

I really believe that much of this public discourse is doing very little to change anybodys mind, he said.

Originally posted here:
Pennsbury school board now cant stop public comments it deems offensive. What does it mean for other districts? - The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission last week took a stand in favor of academic freedom, passing a resolution opposing two pieces of state legislation that would ban Critical Race Theory in K-12 public schools.

The commission on Monday, Nov. 22 discussed Senate Bill 460 and House Bill 5097, asserting a stance against any and all legislation that promotes censorship and book banning.

The resolution states that the proposed legislation provides for censorship for educators and gives students an inaccurate and incomplete account of the history of the United States.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a framework in education aimed at fostering understanding of race and racism on an institutional and structural level.

Its most often taught in colleges and universities. As it is not currently being taught in K-12 schools anywhere in Michigan, both bills would preemptively prevent Critical Race Theory in classrooms.

CRT arose as a political talking point around the country in connection with the New York Times 1619 Project, a collection of essays and literary works that drew focus to the onset of slavery in the United States and its impact on American history.

Conservatives in Michigan argue that Critical Race Theory inaccurately characterizes U.S. history and could sow division among students.

Senate Bill 460, sponsored by Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton, and House Bill 5097, sponsored by Rep. Andrew Beeler, R-Port Huron, were both introduced in the Michigan Legislature earlier this year.

Related: Michigan lawmakers debate bill to ban critical race theory in schools

Under Theis legislation, public school districts in Michigan would be banned from teaching Critical Race Theory, material from the 1619 Project or other anti-American and racist theories, including that the United States is a fundamentally racist country, that the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution are fundamentally racist documents and that an individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Under Beeler legislation, public school districts in Michigan must not, in any way, include the promotion of any form of race or gender stereotyping or anything that could be understood as implicit race or gender stereotyping. Examples of race or gender stereotyping, according to the bill, are statements, beliefs or ideas that individuals hold a collective quality or belief or bear collective guilt for historical wrongs on the basis of their race or gender.

The bills were referred to the Senate Committee of the Whole and the House Committee on Education and Career Readiness, respectively.

Related: Candidate for governor threatens to wipe out Education Department over Critical Race Theory. Actually, he cant.

The Civil Rights Commission resolution goes on to mention that the U.S. Constitution protects teachers and students who have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech in the classroom, stating:

... Academic freedom is fundamental to fact based, historically accurate knowledge, delivered by trained educational professionals. No facts, ethnicities, languages, races and cultures should be removed from history.

The resolution also referred to comments made by state Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice at an Aug. 10 Michigan Board of Education meeting, in which he said students need to learn about race and racism.

The only Republican member of the commission, Ira Combs, Jr., said he doesnt believe Critical Race Theory is a legitimate terminology.

I would prefer that it be called critical race history, Combs said. Teach the history, teach the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

Combs abstained from voting on the resolution. It passed with support from five commissioners: Commission Chair Stacie Clayton, Commission Vice Chair Zenna Faraj Elhasan and Commissioners Richard Corriveau, Gloria Lara and Portia Roberson. Commissioners Regina Gasco-Bentley and Anupama Kosaraju were absent from the Nov. 22 meeting.

Clayton clarified that the resolution was meant to neither support nor oppose Critical Race Theory.

What our resolution is doing is supporting academic freedom for teachers so that they are able to teach historically and factually, and not remove any parts of history that might make some uncomfortable such as ethnicities or race or gender, Clayton said.

Related:

Critical Race theory isnt taught in Michigan schools, so why is it such a hot topic? - mlive.com

Amid debate over critical race theory, Michigan college creates K-12 curriculum based on conservative perspectives - mlive.com

Michigan lawmakers debate bill to ban critical race theory in schools - mlive.com

Berated and interrogated: School board meetings have become untenable amid mask mandates, critical race theory - mlive.com

Read the original post:
Michigan Civil Rights Commission says Critical Race Theory ban would censor teachers - mlive.com

Tom Leatherbury| Special to the Globe-News

To use his words, Texas Gov.Greg Abbott has a problem when it comes to censorship and double standards. Abbottrecently assertedthat Big Tech companies are the ones with a big problem when it comes to censorship and double standards, but those claims could be easily used to categorize one of the host of new laws that the governor encouraged the Texas Legislature to pass to compel speech the government approves and suppress speech the government disapproves the new social media censorship law, House Bill 20.

This unconstitutional law attacks the very companies that facilitate safety and well-being for their users by combating misinformation the same companies that Abbott is courting to bring good-paying jobs to Texas.

Abbott has praised House Bill 20, signed into law on Sept.9, 2021, for protecting Texans from wrongful censorship on social media platforms. The law prevents tech companies with 50 million monthly users or more from banning users based on political or religious viewpoints wherever those viewpoints are expressed. The law also requires multiple disclosures about content moderation practices and processes by these companies, sets a 48-hour deadline for the review and removal of illegal content, and creates nearly insurmountable obstacles for email service providers to block spam and other unwanted messages.

While the bills supporters may claim the law is protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans, in reality, the law tramples the free speech of private American companies. House Bill 20 is even more draconian than a recent Florida law that a federal judge held unconstitutional on multiple grounds and preliminarily enjoined from taking effect.

Judge Hinkles injunction against this Florida law set the record straight, stating that the First Amendment says "Congress"shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to state and local governments. The First Amendment does not restrict the rights of private entities not performing traditional, exclusive public functions. In short, the First Amendment provides that a state government, like Florida and Texas, cannot abridge the speech rights of a private company, like Google.

The Florida federal court concluded that tech companies are private entities with First Amendment rights of editorial discretion and that state governments do not possess the power to disregard these rights. However, Gov.Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature do not seem to care about this federal court ruling or the United States Constitution. They disregarded both by passing House Bill 20 and signing it into law.

Texas taxpayers will bear the financial burden of watching House Bill 20 being declared unconstitutional now that NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association have filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to invalidate House Bill 20.

Aside from infringing on companies constitutional rights, laws like House Bill 20 make it more difficult and expensive for companies to create enjoyable and secure products for users. Technology companies have stepped up and have made robust investments to keep products family-friendly, clean from hate speech and misinformation, and safe from illegal activity.

House Bill 20s drastic measures could easily impose significant additional costs on tech companies. Preventing companies from moderating content might score Texas politicians some cheap political points, but it will cost users and taxpayers severely. Texas officials should be empowering tech companies to continue their efforts to enhance safety from hate speech and misinformation, not disincentivizing them with costly, unfair, and unconstitutional laws and regulations.

Perhaps the largest insult to tech companies and Texans can be attributed to Abbotts double standards. He is using House Bill 20 to target and hurt the very companies that he is actively recruiting to invest in the state of Texas. On one hand, Texas is courting tech companies to bring good-paying jobs and economic vitality to the people of Texas, but on the other, the governor and other Texas officials are on a mission to punish the same companies who could bring those immense benefits to our economy.

It's time for Abbott to embrace the economic free market principles that have made Texas attractive to so many businesses and stop encouraging the passage of unconstitutional legislation.

Tom Leatherbury is the director of the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and Texas counsel to Electronic Frontier Foundation in NetChoice v. Paxton, the constitutional challenge to House Bill 20. The views expressed are his own.

Excerpt from:
Leatherbury: Meet Greg Abbott: The governor of censorship and double standards - Amarillo.com

State legislatures are a greater threat to free speech than the social climate on college campuses

Will Katcher / Daily Collegian

With debates surrounding cancel culture and freedom of speech on college campuses growing more and more contentious, one group of academics claim to have found the magic solution: creating a new university. Condemning what they call a pervasive climate of anxiety and self-censorship on college campuses, the group announced last week that they will be founding the University of Austin. While the Universitys backers are a diverse group of prominent higher ed critics, they all share a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a belief that it is time for something new. They allege that modern universities have sacrificed the pursuit of truth, and turned into breeding grounds for liberal intolerance and administrative overreach. By forming their own university, they hope to reestablish open inquiry as the central guiding principle of a university and promote greater diversity of thought.

But have universities really abandoned the principles of open inquiry for liberal orthodoxy? It quickly becomes apparent that such claims are quite strained. Consider the dire terms Pano Kanelos a former St. Johns University president and a founding trustee of UATX used to describe the state of higher education in his announcement last week: We had thought such censoriousness was possible only under oppressive regimes in distant lands. But it turns out that fear can become endemic in a free society.

The Stanford historian Niall Ferguson (another founding trustee) similarly wrote about the state of modern universities, saying, Any student of the totalitarian regimes of the mid-20th century recognizes all this with astonishment. It turns out that it can happen in a free society, too, if institutions and individuals who claim to be liberal choose to behave in an entirely illiberal fashion. Is catastrophizing college culture really warranted, or is this yet another example of moral panic?

Its hard to deny that there are some problems with speech and censorship on campuses, but the main question is one of scale. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-partisan organization that tracks issues of freedom of speech, has observed a substantial increase in targeting incidents among scholars, which is when institutions take punitive action against faculty for exercising their freedom of speech. This can include demands for an investigation, demotion, censorship, suspension and even termination. FIRE notes that while there were 24 targeting incidents in 2015, that number rose to 113 in 2020.

All of this does merit some attention, but not the apocalyptic rhetoric of some of UATXs backers. As Adam Gurri notes in Liberal Currents, the number of incidences observed by organizations like FIRE are still quite small compared to the huge populations theyre drawn from.

FIRE also observes that these incidences are more often from people who are more politically left-leaning than the person targeted. It seems to me that this may be caused by a significant imbalance between the number of liberal and conservative professors at most universities.

Another issue with the rhetoric of many UATX affiliates is that they fail to recognize the variety of approaches to free speech and intellectual diversity at different universities. Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, responded to the announcement of UATX by acknowledging the problem of groupthink at elite universities, but pushed back on the notion that this occurs at all universities. The American higher education system is already immense, Roth writes. And once you look past those elite colleges, youll see a huge range of philosophies and politics. He goes on to list several examples of these varying approaches, including that of his own University where they have sought to hire more scholars from conservative, libertarian and faith-based backgrounds to promote greater intellectual diversity.

But the largest problem with UATX is that it misrepresents these issues as the most pressing threat to Americas democracy. While its valid to highlight the negative consequences of rash cancel-culture cancelations and advocate for greater intellectual diversity on college campuses, the primary threats to free speech arent coming from universities theyre coming from state legislatures.

Eleven bills in nine states have been passed banning the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 classes and another 18 bills are still pending. These bans have been called educational gag orders by the free speech organization PEN America (standing for Poets, Essayists and Novelists), since they effectively make it impossible to teach an accurate narrative of race politics in American history classes. Some of these same states have also passed electoral reforms that make it easier for state legislatures to overturn the popular vote if they claim there was voter fraud. Its abundantly clear that the most immediate and dangerous threat to U.S. democracy comes from these efforts on the right. Complaints about college cancel culture are, at best, secondary issues and at worst, dangerous distractions.

Benjamin Schnurr can be reached at [emailprotected] and followed on Twitter at @Ben_Schnurr.

More:
The new anti-woke university is built on false claims that social censorship plagues college campuses - The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Column By Melissa Martin

Every person has a story. Every person is a story. Our world is laced and leathered together by stories about humanity; the rights and the wrongs. Threads of history wrap around and around and around a never-ending spool of narratives.

And while we anger at the silencing of stories in communist countries, we dare not fathom the suppressing of the pen in America. How can censorship take root and live in the United States, a great country built upon a foundation of civil liberties? By igniting and fanning fear during a pandemic, thats how.

We witnessed the shushing, hushing, and crushing of written words by the private sectors, Facebook and Twitter, concerning the 2020 presidential election. But, the flames of internet censorship continue to blaze.

Jessica Berg Wilsons husband said Twitter censored Jessicas obituary. Doctors diagnosed her withvaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia(VITT). And VITT is a rare, and sometimes fatal, blood-clotting condition triggered by COVID vaccines. How interesting that the Twitter fact-checkers failed to check the facts. Visitclarkcountytoday.comfor more of this story.

According to a recent article inThe Washington Post, YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists. Since when is questioning any medical information a crime? Since when is an opposite belief or opinion about medical treatments considered an enemy to democracy? Since megalomaniac Anthony Fauci rolled out his pandemic plan as the truth, the light, and the way for healing.

But, theres a sticky wicket. Social Media platforms are private companies and legally able to establish rules within their communities. And this includes censorship of content. Thats a big fly in the ointment.

Has Big Brother entered the Whitehouse? Is George Orwells dystopian 1949 novel,Nineteen Eighty-Four,coming to pass? Biden allied groups, including theDemocratic National Committee, are planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively, and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.Visitwww.politico.com.

What actions can citizens take to protect civil liberties?

Write to your state representatives. Write Letters to the Editor of your local and state newspapers. Join organizations that promote freedom of speech and freedom to write.

Thirty states are in the process of enacting laws against internet censorship.

The Stop Social Media Censorship Act passed Floridas Republican-majority House and Senate. DeSantis signed it into law, but a judge blocked it.

In Wisconsin, Assembly Bill 589 would prevent the censorship of media enterprises based on the content of their publication or broadcast.Assembly Bill 530 would prevent the censorship of posts by or about political candidates and elected officials.

Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of the more than 100 centers worldwide that make up the PEN International network. PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Visitpen.org.

TheFree Expression Network (FEN)is an alliance of organizations dedicated to protecting the First Amendment right of free expression and the values it represents, and to opposing governmental efforts to suppress constitutionally-protected speech. Visitncac.org.

The First Amendment Coalition is a nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to advancing free speech, more open and accountable government, and public participation in civic affairs. Visitfirstamendmentcoalition.org.

We cannot allow freedom of speech or any civil liberties to be erased by anybody, no matter how powerful or greedy or corrupt.

If all printers were determined not to print anything until they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.Benjamin Franklin

Melissa Martin is an opinion editorial columnist, author, and educator. The opinion in this editorial is her own.

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Editorial: Erasing the freedom to disagree - The Gila Herald