Abstract

Concerns often arise about the First Amendment rights of public school educators in the United States both inside and outside of their classrooms. As such, after setting the legal context, we analyze teachers’ free speech rights in a variety of settings. In order to do so, we discuss illustrative cases analyzing the legal landscape of teachers’ free expressions rights in U.S. public schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview highlighting Supreme Court cases and selected opinions from lower courts involving teacher speech impact the expressive rights of educators in public schools rather than serve as a comprehensive analysis of all such speech cases.

Highlights

  • Questions frequently arise in the United States about the First Amendment free speech rights of public school educators both inside and outside of their classrooms

  • We examine illustrative cases to discuss the legal landscape of teachers’

  • According to the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution (1791), “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . .” With regard to educators’ free speech rights, while “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,”2 there

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Summary

Introduction

Questions frequently arise in the United States about the First Amendment free speech rights of public school educators both inside and outside of their classrooms. After describing the legal context, we analyze teachers’ free speech rights in a variety of contexts, including curriculum-related, political speech, offensive language, preferred pronouns, classroom decorations, school-sponsored activities, and speech made outside of classrooms. We examine illustrative cases to discuss the legal landscape of teachers’. Free expression rights in U.S public schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview highlighting Supreme Court cases and selected lower court opinions involving teacher speech that impact educators in public schools rather than to serve as a comprehensive analysis of all educator speech cases.. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

Legal Context
Teacher Speech Related to School Curricula
Challenges by state legislatures
Challenges by parents
Challenges by school officials
Political Speech in Classrooms
Offensive Language in Classrooms
Free Speech and Preferred Pronouns
Classroom Decorations and Speech
Speech and School-Sponsored Activities
Whistleblowers or Other Forms of Retaliation
Speech and Social Media
10. Recommendations
11. Conclusions
Full Text
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