by Greg Piper
The The Florida school district where Moms for Liberty was born according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as a rejection of their COVID-19 mandates for their children, raising a conservative group is completely wrong, so to speak.
His Tuesday’s ruling struck down Brevard Public Schools and four current and former school board members for unconstitutionally restricting public comments at their meetings as part of a lawsuit filed by the Brevard County chapter and its members, the founder of Moms for Liberty, calling out public schools throughout the court’s jurisdiction in the Sunshine State , Alabama and Georgia.
Judge Britt Grant’s opinion, joined by another Trump nominee, Barbara Lagoa, reverses the trial court’s summary judgment for the District, citing several incidents that occurred in 2021 that crossed the constitutional line for the District with based in Atlanta.
Chairman of the Management Board Misty Haggard-Belford cut out Lois Lacoste for “name-calling” when she used the term “liberal left” to describe those who support so-called gender affirmation policies, saying they violated a ban on “offensive” comments, but allowed LaCoste to resume and finish her comment.
Belford even used the board’s “obscenity” ban to cut off a Moms for Liberty member Michelle Beavers as she read the book aloud in the school library on the subject of “school sexual encounter” and got to the word “shit” while ordering the Beavers to “keep it clean.”
The Beavers read this passage to protest the book’s accessibility to teenage children.
“It would be difficult, if not impossible, for speakers to adequately express their concerns about a particular book without informing both the Board and the community of what the book says,” Grant wrote.
“Describing the contents of a book is not as impactful as reading its words, nor is it as illuminating,” the opinion reads. “And what is extraordinary is that the Board has suggested that this speech may be prohibited at a school board meeting because it is inappropriate for children if it comes directly from a book available to children in the elementary school library.”
Judge Charles Wilson, a President Clinton appointee, joined his Republican nominees to reverse and refer Brevard’s “offensive and obscene speech” policy to the trial court for further review, but disagreed with blocking the district’s ban on “personally directed speech.” , considering it a point of view – neutral and reasonable “in the light of the forum”.
It contained links to video recordings several interactions at board meetings “to illustrate the content of comments and interruptions” and to show “the difficulty of enforcing these rules in real time during heated meetings.”
This is an crucial victory for Moms for Liberty after: almost three-year legal battle to put an end to “parents being repeatedly interrupted, silenced, and even removed from meetings when they were trying to address concerns about school policy, curriculum, or leadership to the board,” their attorneys at the firm The Institute for Freedom of Speech reported on Wednesday.
“This decision sends a clear message that school boards cannot use vague rules to silence criticism or discussion of uncomfortable topics,” said IFS Vice President of Litigation Alan Gura.
“When the government seeks to silence the voices of parents, it is the brave among us – those who refuse to be silenced – who become the vanguard of accountability and change,” said Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty. She and Tina Descovich started the group after leaving the Brevard school board.
Attorneys for Brevard Public Schools did not respond Only News inquiries about next steps.
Good news for IFS countered the bad news was that a lawsuit was filed on the same day to block the ban regarding hushed protest against male participation in girls’ sports in a New Hampshire school district.
U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe largely denied the emergency momentary restraining order sought by IFS at Tuesday’s hearing. Court records show the judge scheduled Wednesday for a two-day evidentiary hearing in the Bow School District case just before Thanksgiving.
Regulating public comment by point of view in government meetings, especially criticism of policies related to Covid-19, racial and gender identity, has been a recurring feature of civic life in recent years. IFS obtained a prior injunction against a Pennsylvania school district’s comment practices shortly after the Brevard lawsuit was filed in fall 2021, which sought similar restrictions.
Censorship was not narrow to government actions, including: YouTube removes entire recordings of public meetings when the platform determined that commenters had shared alleged misinformation.
“The government has relatively broad powers to restrict speech in limited public forums, but these powers are not unlimited,” Grant concluded. “Restrictions on speech must still be reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and clear enough for users to know what speech is permitted,” and all three of the policies at issue fail in some way.
Much like the Bow School District forcing parents to move to a newly designated “protest zone” during football games if they want to wear “XX” wristbands, which is contrary to its transgender sports policy, the Brevard board changed its policy amidst legal proceedings, allowing public speakers to “react to their comments” to the Board as a whole, the President or an individual Board member.”
But the ruling says that changed policy continues to fail because it continues to allow the president to “interrupt remarks that are personally addressed to anyone outside these three categories.”
“Belford’s inability to define the policy it was supposed to enforce speaks volumes,” Grant wrote. “The experience of enforcing this policy reflects Belford’s vague definition,” showing that she defined it as naming someone “at least as part of the baseline,” but “several times… Everything.”
A three-judge panel, including Democratic nominee Wilson, rebuked the trial court for dismissing the lawsuit on the grounds that class members did not have an “objectively reasonable” fear of legal harm from management and therefore did not have standing to bring the lawsuit.
They “easily” seek nominal damages, alleging unconstitutional past censorship, Grant wrote.
The board’s argument that ongoing self-censorship by chapter members is unreasonable and therefore unavailable for potential relief is “borderline on frivolous,” the opinion states.
“Belford herself warned participants before the meetings” that they could be fined $500 and go to jail for two months if they “caused a disruption” in the opinion of the chairman, and members were several times cut off before the meetings ended and even expelled, Grant wrote .
The majority rejected the school board’s insistence that the court could not consider more than “five cases” in which unit members themselves were “interrupted or removed from meetings,” arguing that enforcement of the law against “similarly situated speakers” is crucial to whether the rules will be applied to the plaintiffs, leaving them feeling frozen.
Belford who was unseated by a challenger backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis two years ago, she testified that the purpose of the rules she imposed was to prevent “other viewers from inciting themselves in a way that could create a situation that is dangerous or could have an adverse effect on children.”
Grant, however, wrote that she “rarely provided callers with an explanation for why she interrupted or silenced them” over a policy that allegedly encouraged parents to self-censor or remain hushed. Belford’s reasoning in “retrospective explanations” during legal proceedings “often relied on a combination of both policies.”
She changed the “common understanding” of offensive comments by declaring everything “unacceptable” as a violation, cutting off speakers who claimed the board’s COVID masking policy was “a ploy to silence our opposition to this evil LGBTQ agenda,” and even quoting ” insults” he leveled with her [the speaker] by protesters outside the Management Board meeting.”
The ban on calling yourself “evil” is based on point of view and “actually requires ‘happy talk’ on the part of public commenters to avoid suppression,” Grant wrote. “And if the only ideas that can be communicated are views that everyone already finds acceptable, then why hold school board meetings at all?”
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Greg Piper is a reporter for Just the News.
