South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson on Tuesday filed a brief in a First Amendment case aimed at protecting students’ free-speech rights. 21 other states’ attorneys general joined the brief. The friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is about an Ohio school district that is forcing students to use preferred pronouns or be punished.
“At its heart, this case isn’t about transgenderism, it’s about the frightening idea that the government can force people to use particular words and punish them if they don’t,” Attorney General Wilson said. “The Supreme Court of the United States ruled back in 1969 that public school students don’t shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate, so how can a school district compel them to use certain pronouns?”
This case is about the Olentangy Local School District Board of Education, which is near Columbus, Ohio. The board passed a policy to punish students who “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 Wilson is Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who co-led the brief, along with the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Original source can be found here.