Moms for Liberty Defeats School District That Birthed It, Speaking Rules Deemed Unconstitutional
The Florida school district that birthed Moms for Liberty as a repudiation of its COVID-19 mandates on their children is parenting the conservative group all wrong, so to speak, according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Its Tuesday ruling smacked down Brevard Public Schools and four current and former school board members for unconstitutional restrictions on public comments at their meetings in a lawsuit by Moms for Liberty’s founding Brevard County chapter and its members, putting public schools on notice across the court’s jurisdiction of the Sunshine State, Alabama and Georgia.
The opinion by Judge Britt Grant, joined by fellow President Trump nominee Judge Barbara Lagoa, overturns the trial court’s summary judgment for the district, citing several incidents in 2021 that crossed the constitutional line for the Atlanta-based circuit.
Then-board Chair Misty Haggard-Belford cut off Lois Lacoste for “name-calling” when she used the term “liberal left” to describe those who support so-called gender affirming policies, claiming it violated a prohibition on “abusive” comments, but let LaCoste resume and finish her comment.
Belford even used the board’s ban on “obscenity” to cut off Moms for Liberty member Michelle Beavers when she read aloud from a book in the school library about an “in-school sexual encounter” and got to the word “sh*t,” ordering Beavers to “keep it clean.”
Beavers read the passage to protest the book’s availability to young children.
“It would be difficult, if not impossible, for speakers to adequately air their concerns about a particular book without informing both the Board and the community about what that book says,” Grant wrote.
“Describing the content of a book is not as potent as reading its words – nor is it as informative,” the opinion reads. “And it is remarkable for the Board to suggest that this speech can be prohibited in a school board meeting because it is inappropriate for children when it came directly from a book that is available to children in their elementary school library.”
Judge Charles Wilson, nominated by President Clinton, joined his Republican nominees to reverse and remand the Brevard policies on “abusive and obscene speech” to trial court for further evaluation but dissented on blocking the district’s prohibition on “personally directed speech,” finding it viewpoint-neutral and reasonable “in light of the forum.”
He included links to video recordings of several interactions at board meetings “to illustrate the tenor of comments and interruptions” and show “the difficulties of enforcing these policies in real time during heated meetings.”
It’s a major win for Moms for Liberty after a nearly three-year legal battle to stop the “repeated interruption, silencing and even removal of parents from meetings when they attempted to voice their concerns about school policies, curricula or leadership when addressing the board,” their lawyers at the Institute for Free Speech said Wednesday.
“This decision sends a clear message that school boards cannot use vague policies to silence criticism or discussion of uncomfortable topics,” said IFS Vice President of Litigation Alan Gura.
“When the government seeks to mute the voices of parents, it is the brave among us – those who refuse to be silenced – who become the vanguard of accountability and change,” Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice said. She and Tina Descovich founded the group after leaving the Brevard school board.