A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that school officials who prohibited a teacher from attending meetings of a local club for chemistry teachers were entitled to qualified immunity from his suit alleging that their actions violated his First Amendment rights.
Continue reading...Brian and Linda Wilson, the parents of the twin honor roll students, have filed a federal lawsuit against Lee’s Summit R-7 School District (LSR-7SD), says Courthouse News Service, alleging the school district violated their sons’ First and Fourteenth Amendment when it suspended them for 180 days for setting up and running a nonviolent website on their own time and on their own computers. The suit asks a federal court to reinstate the students and remove the suspension from their permanent records.
Continue reading...According to Courthouse News Service, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) has filed suit against the North Carolina Legislature alleging that it held “an unconstitutional midnight session of the General Assembly” to kill teachers’ voluntary payroll deduction for union dues, in an act of “retaliatory viewpoint discrimination.”
Continue reading...A federal district court in Pennsylvania has granted summary judgment in favor of a school district and individual school officials in a suit brought by a former student who claimed the defendants violated her constitutional rights to free association, equal protection, and procedural and substantive due process because school officials failed to discipline the students who were bullying her.
Continue reading...A federal court judge has issued a decree ordering the West Bend School Board (WBSB) to recognize the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as an official school-sponsored club at the district’s high schools, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The decree also prohibits any current or future board members from retaliating against the club or anyone affiliated with it while the case is under the court’s supervision for the next seven years.
Continue reading...A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (AL, GA, FL) has ruled that a federal district court erred in issuing a preliminary injunction barring Georgia’s Secretary of State from enforcing a provision in the state law making a person ineligible to serve on a local school board if that person “has an immediate family member sitting on [that] local board of education or serving as the local school superintendent or as a principal, assistant principal, or system administrative staff in the local school system.” The panel found that the district court erred when it applied strict scrutiny in analyzing the statute’s constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment provision guaranteeing freedom of association. The panel determined, however, that the lower court was correct in finding that the Secretary of State was the proper party to the suit.
Continue reading...The Alabama Education Association (AEA) and its political action committee, A-Vote, has filed suit in federal court against the State of Alabama, says Courthouse News Service, alleging that the state enacted legislation prohibiting teachers from allowing automatic payroll deductions for union dues. The statute makes union members criminally liable if such dues or PAC contributions are used for “phone calling for any political purpose,” or “distributing political literature of any type.”
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