Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador on Tuesday joined a brief in a First Amendment case aimed at protecting students’ free-speech rights. Twenty-one other state attorneys general joined the brief. The friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit involves an Ohio school district that is forcing students to either use preferred pronouns or be punished.
“At the core of this case is the disturbing idea that government can force people to use particular words, and punish them if they don’t,” said Attorney General Labrador. “The Supreme Court of the United States decided 55 years ago that public school students and teachers don’t surrender their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. A school district cannot compel students to use certain pronouns with the threat of punishment.”
The Columbus-area Olentangy Local School District Board of Education passed a policy to punish students that “fail to address a student by [his or her] preferred pronouns, among other things.” A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled that the policies don’t impermissibly compel student speech or prefer a viewpoint affirming gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not allow school officials to coerce students into expressing messages inconsistent with the students’ values,” the brief argues. In fact, it’s the opposite. “The First Amendment stringently limits a state’s authority to compel a private party to express a view with which the private party disagrees.”The brief asks the full Court to grant a petition for rehearing the case.
Joining Attorney General Labrador are South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who co-led the brief, along with the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
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