School’S Right To Boost Tolerance Upheld Teacher’S Rights Not Violated When He Was Ordered To Stop Posting Anti-Gay Materials
Los Angeles schoolteacher Robert Downs thinks homosexuality is immoral. So he was unhappy when his district declared a Gay and Lesbian Awareness Month each June and even unhappier when colleagues posted rainbow flags and gay pride materials on school bulletin boards.
Downs put up his own bulletin board in a hallway near his classroom and posted pictures of a traditional family, texts of a federal law against same-sex marriage and a Supreme Court ruling against sodomy - and, eventually, a biblical passage calling homosexuality “detestable.”
The principal ordered him to stop, saying he was violating not only the school district’s policy but also its curriculum that promoted tolerance and diversity. On Thursday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the school had not violated Downs’ freedom of speech.
Downs can express his views “on the sidewalks, in the parks, through the chat-rooms, at his dinner table, and in countless other locations” - but not on bulletin boards that are overseen by school officials and are the official voice of the school, the court said.
A school district, like other government agencies, “may decide not only to talk about gay and lesbian awareness and tolerance in general, but also to advocate such tolerance if it so desires, and restrict the contrary speech of one of its representatives,” said Judge Stephen Trott in the 3-0 ruling that upheld a federal trial judge’s dismissal of the suit.
Downs, who has taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 20 years, said he would appeal.
“If the government can step in and take sides on that issue, and prohibit anything opposed to their view, then you have a government that is totalitarian,” he said.
School district lawyer Mary Kay Jackson said the ruling reassured every school district, governed by a publicly elected board, that “it can set up a curriculum and teachers need to comply with it. If they don’t like it, they can urge the district to change.”
BACKGROUND Antidiscrimination law
The ruling coincides with an upsurge of gay rights activity in California public schools after last year’s passage of a state law prohibiting discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation.
About 125 Gay-Straight Alliance organizations have been formed in Northern California schools, and on Tuesday an Orange County district dropped its longstanding objections to such organizations.