Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote were banned from school grounds in Bow after wearing the wristbands to a soccer game in September that included a transgender girl on the opposing team. They later sued the school district, and while the no-trespass orders have since expired, they asked the judge to allow them to carry signs and wear the wristbands featuring the symbol for female chromosomes at school events while the case proceeds.
Both men testified at a hearing in November that they didn’t intend to harass or otherwise target transgender athlete Parker Tirrell, and their attorneys argued they did nothing more than silently express their support for reserving girls’ sports for those assigned female at birth.
But in denying their motion Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe said the parents’ “narrow, plausibly inoffensive” intentions weren’t as important as the wider context, and that adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students.
Don’t misunderstand, people. The key here isn’t that it’s hate speech. All kinds of unpopular views are protected by the First Amendment. This is why you can still see Trump supporters waving Nazi flags in parades. If it was just because it was deemed hate speech, well then we should all be worried because Trump’s government is now saying that anyone who preaches hate against America is subject to deportation.
The key is that it happened at a school event. The FA doesn’t apply to non-students at school events if students are the target of speech meant to harass or demean. If this had happened at a club soccer game as opposed to a school event they would have been protected.
I don’t think that’s right, fancy restaurants and other private establishments can enforce dress codes and things like that. Generally speaking, any private organization is allowed to exclude whoever they want from their events so long as they don’t do so for a forbidden reason. Kicking someone out because you don’t like their haircut is fine, but kicking someone out because (for example) they’re Muslim is not.
Yes, private organizations can set their own rules. That doesn’t change the basis of this ruling.
If a private club league had their own rules that said (among other things) “We do not tolerate promoting views that exclude on the basis of sexual identity during league events,” then the league would be within its rights to remove anyone violating that rule. Absent that, free speech applies. Especially for wearing something as vague as a pink bracelet.
Re: your example, there are many organizations that exclude on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. The Boy Scouts, for example, still require that members sign a Declaration of Religious Principle saying that they believe in some sort of higher power. This excludes atheists and agnostics. They also used to exclude homosexuals. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor back in the late 90s or early 00s that as a private organization they had the right to exclude whoever they wanted. They changed their stance on homosexuality voluntarily, but the SC ruling still applies. It is public institutions that cannot exclude, not private.
As far as this ruling goes, it’s not about the message it’s about the target and the fact that it was at a school function.
Ah, I see what you’re getting at and agree with what I think is your larger point, however all the first amendment nuances shake out this isn’t a case about a trans athlete getting any kind of special protections, this is just an “individuals’ free speech rights vs organizations’ rights to assemble without disruption” case. If these guys were thrown out for waging Palestinian flags or whatever other kinds of protesting it would be the same basic legal issue.
Both men testified at a hearing in November that they didn’t intend to harass or otherwise target transgender athlete Parker Tirrell
And the fact that a trans athlete happened to be on the team didn’t have anything to do with that decision? I smell bullshit, and I’m glad the judge saw through that single-ply excuse as well.
adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students.
This is poorly phrased. They do enjoy the First Amendment right to express dissent to the trans athlete’s inclusion, even if it is demeaning. However, the state has the right to hold time, place, and manner restrictions on First Amendment protected conduct. School soccer games are not a traditional forum for protest, and schools have pretty wide ranging power to limit expression that counters the normal functioning of the school including sporting events, as well as the ability to restrict participation in and attendance of school sponsored events for misconduct. They can’t be arrested for expressing themselves as they did, especially not for harassment. But they can be trespassed.
Thanks for clarifying. It makes sense now.
It’s legal to own pornography. It’s not legal to show up to a middle school sporting event with a 3’x6’ poster of a money shot, unfurl it, and hold it high for all to see.
This is a false equivalence as it’s equally illegal to distribute porn to children anyway, and to do the same thing on a public street during an otherwise legal protest. Public Indecency laws come into play then, which has nothing to do with what these guys were doing.
If someone brought this shit to my kid’s sports game me and my wife would beat the shit out of them.
Jesus christ these loser adults really want to bully children again
Yeah I remember the SCOTUS bong hits for jesus case where our failure of a chief justice asserted that students (and anyone not staff) do not get the protections of the constitution while in public school, a federally funded and owned system, because of the ol “screw you, that’s why” explanation of overturning an already established precedent because “muh drugs bad”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick
Also from the original case that the above case decided to ignore:
The substantial disruption test is a criterion set forth by the United States Supreme Court, in the leading case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).[1] The test is used to determine whether an act by a U.S. public school official (State actor) has abridged a student’s constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of free speech.
The test, as set forth in the Tinker opinion, asks the question: Did the speech or expression of the student “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school,” or might it “reasonably have led school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities?” The case holds that to justify suppression of speech, school officials would need to show that the conduct in question would “materially and substantially interfere” with the operation of the school.
Can’t wait for Roberts to use this case to undo the same FA protections for students bruh
