This has been a bad year for freedom of expression in the United States. ICE thugs have hauled people away without charges for expressing views that the government doesn’t like. In New Hampshire, a federal judge has delivered an outrageous decision regarding a protest in Bow, New Hampshire.
The ruling by Judge Steven McAuliffe is full of absurdities and disregard for the First Amendment. The basic argument is that school athletic events are a limited public forum, and the schools retain some control over types of expression at them. This is true, but it doesn’t mean they can arbitrarily decide what people can say or can’t. The restrictions have to serve a legitimate purpose and be viewpoint-neutral, and they have to be enforced evenly.
Some restrictions could be reasonable. Marching with protest signs inside a stadium during an event might be considered too disruptive to allow. However, the protest consisted of wearing wristbands with the letters “XX” on them. It’s hard to think of a less disruptive form of protest than an armband. If they’re prohibited, caps or T-shirts with political slogans ought to be banned as well. I wonder whether Bow athletic events ban people for wearing such things.
The news article makes it clear that McAuliffe doesn’t care about viewpoint neutrality or legitimate purposes. He claimed that the protest might “poison the educational atmosphere” and that “the broader and more demeaning/harassing message the School District understood plaintiffs’ ‘XX’ symbols to convey was, in context, entirely reasonable.”
Education is supposed to let people know about and evaluate different viewpoints. McAuliffe has a very disturbing view of education if he considers the expression of a position poisonous. The plaintiffs did not, as far as I know, harass anyone. The idea that an “XX” symbol can constitute harassment is the nonsense that hurt feelings equal injury.
Del Kolde, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said, “This was adult speech in a limited public forum, which enjoys greater First Amendment protection than student speech in the classroom. Bow School District officials were obviously discriminating based on viewpoint because they perceived the XX wristbands to be ‘trans-exclusionary’.”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she’ll look into the case — probably for all the wrong reasons. If she really cared about free speech, she’d be standing up for Rümeysa Öztürk, whose situation is orders of magnitude worse.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “But I hate this protest, that makes it hate speech, and hate speech isn’t free speech.” Please keep in mind that if there’s an “except speech I don’t like” provision implicit in the First Amendment, it applies to all values of “I.” Unless you’ve got a high government office, the exceptions you want aren’t going to be at the top of the exclusion list.
If you’re only for free speech that you agree with, you’re against free speech.