That inconvenient First Amendment

Hudson (Mass.) High School has run afoul of the First Amendment and should lose this case, if the actual facts are as stated in this story. Teenagers shouldn't lose the right to hold unpopular political views because they attend school.

When I attended public high school in Tennessee, the teachers couldn't drum my unpopular views out of me. To their credit, for the most part the they didn't try. My fellow students did try, and that too was freedom of speech.

The school administrators in Hudson claim they acted to ensure a safe and appropriate school environment. Instead, they mostly showed their own inexperience with the web. They objected to a link on the site to a video of a beheading, presumably in the Muslim world, possibly one of the ones committed in Iraq.

If they blocked only the videotaped beheadings, their actions are consistent with this claim. If they blocked the entire conservative web site, well, that sounds as though the plaintiff's claim is true.

The story does leave a lot to be desired. For one thing, there's very little from the school district, a single quote counterposed against three plaintiff sources, two of which give multiple quotes or paraphrases.

There's nothing objective about what the plaintiff is seeking. He says it's not about money - so what is it about? Hudson should be settling; what poison pill is keeping them from simply admitting they were wrong.

And, of course, calling the Rutherford Institute a think tank is ridiculous. It's a legal advocacy group. No reporter would call the ACLU a think tank - for the simple reason that it isn't.

My own experience of Hudson High School's commitment to the First Amendment isn't legally probative, but it gives some context. In 2004, as a proxy for a Democratic candidate, I took part in a debate before students with the Republican challenger. Conservative viewpoints were well and vocally represented; I had to respond to numerous challenges to Democratic positions on immigration, bilingual education, public expenditures, and taxation. The teacher in charge squelched some students who all fell into the disruptive know-nothing category. Conservatives were probably over-represented in that group, like this girl from the 2005 article about filing the lawsuit:

"We already feel we are getting the liberal side in class," said junior club member Sarah Berube.

Oh, that pesky liberal bias of facts...