TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A federal judge has, at least for now, blocked a Moms for Liberty effort to remove certain speaking restrictions at Brevard County Public Schools board meetings. U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton, Jr. has blocked a preliminary injunction.
The conservative non-profit filed suit against Brevard County Schools in November 2021, alleging the board was restricting their First Amendment speech rights at board meetings by limiting their right to speak by interrupting or criticizing members of the Brevard chapter during meetings.
“Brevard school board conduct their meetings as if the First Amendment does not exist,” the nonprofit alleged, arguing that Moms for Liberty and other citizens who “criticize the Defendants’ policies are regularly chastised, criticized, or silenced when they speak during the public comment portion of school board meetings.”
The board members named as defendants instead responded in court that “much to Plaintiffs’ dismay, the public comment portion of the Brevard County Public School Board’s meetings are not public free-for-alls,” and that “maintaining decorum at these meetings is vital.”
While public participation is encouraged, the Brevard school board said it does not “forfend heated comments and participation or obstruct rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” and that no speech is outright prohibited at the meetings. Instead, their policy is an effort for “appropriate balance of permitting public input and maintaining decorum” in the public meetings.
Moms for Liberty pushed back, writing in court that the “First Amendment does not exist to protect the speech that government officials find inoffensive. The rights of free speech and petition come into play only where, as here, government officials seek to silence views that they dislike.”
However, in January, a federal judge dismissed Moms for Liberty’s request for a preliminary injunction on the restrictions, saying the policy of the school board was not specifically targeting Moms for Liberty, but was rather “content and viewpoint neutral.”
In his January ruling, Dalton wrote the policy “allows the (school board) chair to interrupt speech only when it is ‘too lengthy, personally directed, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant.’ … And prohibiting abusive and obscene comments is not based on content or viewpoint, but rather is critical to prevent disruption, preserve ‘reasonable decorum,’ and facilitate an orderly meeting — which the Eleventh Circuit (Court of Appeals) has held on multiple occasions is permissible.”
As the appeals process continued, Dalton ruled in favor of the defendants, in part, blocking the preliminary injunction on the grounds that the Brevard County School Board’s policy “does not affect a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct because abusive, irrelevant, and disruptive speech” is still allowed in the forum, and therefore it “is not overbroad.”
However, judges reviewing the appeal did not rule on the entirety of Moms for Liberty’s suit, instead writing that the denial of the preliminary injunction was affirmed, without ruling on the overall suit itself.
“After review of the parties’ briefs, and with the benefit of oral argument, we find no abuse of discretion,” the court wrote. “We therefore affirm the district court’s order,” which denied the preliminary injuction.
Meanwhile, the main case between Moms for Liberty’s Brevard County chapter and the Brevard County School Board is still underway, with Judge Dalton presiding.
