Appeals court upholds right of district to maintain control of its website
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a South Carolina school district in June, upholding the school board’s authority to maintain control over the information it provides to the public.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that Lexington County School District One did not have to approve a request from voucher advocate Randall Page to post pro-voucher information on the district’s website.
The case “raised the important issue of government speech in the school district context,” says the district’s attorney, David Duff. The ruling affirms the district’s ability “to engage in advocacy in support of or against legislation without creating an open forum that would allow competing viewpoints to be aired in the same mechanism.”
The district had included a message in PTA newsletters denouncing proposed state legislation, known as the Put Parents in Charge Act (PPICA), to create a private school voucher program.
The district also posted on its official website a school board resolution against vouchers and links to two organizations—the South Carolina School Boards Association and Choose Children First—that opposed PPICA.
When Randall Page, a supporter of PPICA, sought “equal access” to the Lexington County district’s information distribution system, the district denied the request on the grounds that it had the right to choose what type of information to disseminate to the public.
Board policy says school officials can reject material that does “not directly promote educational, recreational, or cultural activities that would be of interest to students or their parents.”
Page, head of a group called South Carolinians for Responsible Government, then sued the district on the grounds that it had created an open forum and engaged in impermissible viewpoint discrimination.
The 4th Circuit ruled that the Lexington County school district’s website was “government speech” and not a “limited public forum” because it provided links to other websites “to buttress its own message and it thus retained sole control over its message.”
NSBA, along with the school boards associations of South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, joined the suit in support of the Lexington County school district.
Duff, with the Duff, White, and Turner law firm in Columbia, S.C., said a ruling against the district would have had broad implications for government at all levels, as well as school boards. Government agencies—including school districts—would have had to “create a forum for all competing views whenever they speak out on an issue.”
Such a situation would create challenges from a practical standpoint, he added, noting that districts would have to hire additional staff just to keep up with the demand.
Duff believes it enhances democracy if citizens know a school board’s position on an issue. If people disagree, there’s always the “ballot box remedy.”
The court affirmed that message, stating that school board members “may be removed at the next election, if voters disagree with the manner in which they have exercised their discretion.”
Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2008, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789.