A number of legal decisions have shown the First Amendment rights of teachers in K-12 classrooms are “strictly limited,” according to a School of Education professor and education law expert.
Suzanne Eckes, the Susan S. Engeleiter Chair in Education Law, Policy, and Practice in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, lent her expertise on the matter for a recent story in the Washington Post.
The story focused on a directive from the Virginia governor’s office that puts new restrictions on transgender students, including requiring schools to categorize transgender children by their “biological sex” when it comes to using the bathroom and barring students from adopting a new name or pronouns without parental permission.
According to the story, since releasing the policy, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has argued teachers have a First Amendment right to refuse to use students’ pronouns, citing an Ohio federal appeals court’s decision in a higher education case.
Eckes told the Post that argument may not hold up, because legal rulings have shown teacher speech is protected differently in K-12 schools than in higher education institutions.
“Freedom of expression under the First Amendment is much different in a college classroom than it is in a K-through-12 classroom,” Eckes said.
Eckes noted pronoun use is a new legal “gray area,” but said, “there are plenty of cases that just show that First Amendment rights of teachers are strictly limited.”
Read the entire Washington Post article here.