Law of Unintended Consequences: Too Much Free Speech in Schools?
By John Kennedy
Associate Editor
During the recent legislative session, social conservatives passed a bill designed to encourage prayer in schools. The bill might also encourage a few things in schools that they didn’t bargain for.
House Bill 31 grew out of a longstanding dispute in the Panhandle’s Santa Rosa County, where the ACLU got the school district to sign a consent decree restricting prayer and religious activities by students at school events. The decree also bars school officials from preaching or promoting prayers during school functions and organizing school-sponsored religious services.
Several Panhandle lawmakers, angered by the consent-decree restrictions, fought back this spring. They got the Legislature to approve a measure that would prohibit school officials from infringing on the free-speech rights of students or teachers, unless they agree to the limits in writing.
“This bill says that just because you’re a student or work for a school district, it doesn’t mean you check your rights at the door,” says Rep. Brad Drake, R-Eucheeanna, a House sponsor of the measure.
First Amendment advocates agree that the legislation would enhance free speech. But they point out it could also bring consequences that supporters failed to envision.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Association in Washington, D.C., says the legislation may unshackle student newspapers from the usual oversight of school administrators, effectively putting Florida among seven states – none in the Southeast – that have passed laws endorsing free expression for students. Student papers running frank discussions of sex on campus, drug-use, and other provocative topics usually face few restrictions in the states that have approved such laws, LoMonte says.
“This bill certainly leaves an open question about what the standard in Florida is going to be for student newspapers,” says LoMonte, a former Tallahassee reporter with the Florida Times-Union.
Similarly, because the legislation also would safeguard teachers and other school personnel, it may blunt sanctions by school administrators against personnel for speech and dress code violations, experts say.
“The focus of the bill may have been about freedom of religion,” says Barbara Petersen, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, an advocacy organization funded by news organizations. “But it’s very broad and seems to open the door for free speech, whether it be a T-shirt that says `George Bush Sucks,’ a Confederate flag, or students wearing head scarves to school.”
Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, acknowledges that the legislation may turn into a free-speech hornets’ nest. “I imagine we’re going to see some lawsuits come out of this,” Blanton says.
But Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker, a sponsor of the legislation, disagrees, saying the measure would have “no impact on school discipline or longstanding rules.”
“What cannot happen under this law is a teacher cannot stop a student from bowing his or her head in quiet, silent prayer before the FCAT (test) begins, as long as it does not obstruct the health, safety and welfare of the other members of the class,” Evers says.
He adds, “Similarly, no child can stand up and start saying the pledge loudly during the FCAT because, again, the health, safety and the welfare restrictions established by years of First Amendment case law still apply.”
Gov. Charlie Crist has until Saturday to act on the legislation.
Meanwhile, the Santa Rosa consent decree is under attack in court. The Liberty Counsel, a conservative advocacy organization based in Orlando, filed suit last month contending that the consent decree makes a “mockery of the First Amendment.”
