Better News From the Courts
27th June 2024
Today the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Cajune v. Independent School District 194. That school district is immediately adjacent to the one where my kids went to school, and plaintiffs were represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, on whose board I serve and which has often (albeit wrongly) been described as an “arm” of the policy organization that I run. Briefly, plaintiffs claimed that the school district engaged in viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment when it posted “Black Lives Matter” posters in classrooms, but refused a request to also post “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” posters.
The 8th Circuit reversed the trial court’s Rule 12 dismissal of plaintiffs’ case, and remanded the case for further proceedings. So plaintiffs haven’t won yet. The school district’s principal defense is the “government speech doctrine,” which seems to post-date my law school training. The government speech doctrine holds that a governmental unit can engage in endless propaganda, as long as it is speaking on its own behalf. The remedy is at the ballot box.