The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two cases involving highly charged political speech connected to public schools. One involved a teacher who was dismissed over social media posts that her school district deemed derogatory and disruptive. The other centered on a student who says he was bullied and harassed by classmates and teachers after wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
In the teacher’s case, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the decision to deny review on procedural grounds, but suggested that in a future case, the court should clarify that school districts and other public employers may not target “employees who express disfavored political views.”
The court’s actions came as the it worked to sew up loose ends after issuing the final meritsdecisions of the term on June 27, including its 6-3 rulings allowing parents to opt their children out of lessons based on LGBTQ+ storybooks, rejecting a major challenge to the $4 billion E-rate program for school internet connections, and sharply curtailing the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions against federal policies—a decision that will be relevant for challenges to education policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The justices did not act on June 30 on three pending appeals involving state laws barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Federal appeals courts have blocked the Arizona, Idaho, and West Virginia laws, and the Supreme Court appears to have held the appeals while it considered United States v. Skrmetti, the case about a Tennessee law barring puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors.
On June 18, the court upheld the Tennessee law in Skrmetti, ruling that it need only survive rational-basis scrutiny under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Challengers of the three states’ athletics laws have raised equal protection claims, and Arizona, Idaho, and West Virginia appealed the injunctions blocking their laws to the high court. Most legal observers now expect the court to vacate the injunctions and send the cases back to the federal appeals courts for a fresh review.
Teacher fired over TikTok posts
Meanwhile, in MacRae v. Mattos, the justices declined to hear the appeal of Massachusetts teacher Kari MacRae, who was fired by the Hanover school district in 2021 over several posts on TikTok that appeared before she had joined the district as a high school math and business teacher in September of that year.
MacRae posted, shared, or liked posts that expressed views that immigration laws should be enforced, that a person’s sex is immutable, and that society should be racially colorblind. One said, “I feel bad for parents nowadays. You have to be able to be able to explain the birds & the bees … The bees & the bees … The birds & the birds … The birds that used to be bees …”
Another showed a photo of a muscular, bearded adult male with a tagline that says, “Hi my name is Meagan, I’m here for the Girl’s [sic] track meet.”
These posts circulated in the spring of 2021 as MacRae was a candidate for the school board in the town of Bourne, Mass., a post she won.
After they came to the attention of administrators in Hanover, the district concluded that retaining her would have “a significant negative impact on student learning” at the high school.
MacRae sued under the First Amendment, but lost in federal district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, in Boston. A panel of that court applied a balancing test for public employee speech from the 1968 Supreme Court case in Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School 205.
That case held that a school district violated the free-speech rights of a teacher who had written a letter to a newspaper criticizing the school board’s allocation of funds. But Pickering also established the test that weighs the employee’s interest in speaking with the public agency’s interest in an efficient workplace. The test has since been amended by another Supreme Court public employee speech case and is thus known as the Pickering-Garcetti balancing test.
Justice Thomas, in his statement regarding the denial of review, said he agreed with the court that MacRae’s appeal had not squarely challenged the 1st Circuit’s Pickering-Garcetti framework.
Thomas showed some sympathy for the teacher’s claims, writing that the 1st Circuit had “discounted the value of MacRae’s speech” because the lower court had viewed the TikTok posts as, in its words, “mocking, derogatory, and disparaging.”
“The 1st Circuit’s analysis strikes me as deeply flawed,” Thomas said. “To start, I do not see how the tone of MacRae’s posts can bear on the weight of her First Amendment interest.”
He argued that satirical or controversial speech can still raise legitimate matters of public concern, he said, and MacRae’s “comparatively mild posts” expressed views held “by no means an isolated segment of public opinion.”
Thomas added that, “In an appropriate case, I would make clear that public employers cannot use Pickering-Garcetti balancing generally or unsupported claims of disruption in particular to target employees who express disfavored political views.”
A MAGA hat and claims of harassment
The court also declined to hear B.W. v. Austin Independent School District, the case involving a student who wore a MAGA hat associated with President Trump.
Brooks Warden was in middle school in 2017 when he wore such a hat on a school field trip to show his support for Trump. In court papers he alleged that the predominantly Hispanic students at his school disparaged him at school and a teacher once referred to him as “Whitey.”
In 2020, he and his parents sued the district under the First Amendment related to his political views. But after a magistrate judge recommended the dismissal of that claim, the family shifted to a Title VI racial harassment claim under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A federal district judge rejected both claims in the suit, and the family appealed based only on the Title VI claim. But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, affirmed the dismissal, holding that the suit’s attempts to conflate politics and race could not sustain the Title VI claim.
The full 5th Circuit later declined a rehearing over the dissent of several judges, who said the student “was harassed for both racial and political reasons.”
In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Warden argued that “it is evident that the bullying and harassment [he] experienced occurred, in part, because he is white” and that “societal acceptance of racism against white individuals is a national issue of growing concern.”
In a response brief, the Austin district said the case “has devolved into a publicity stunt fueled by partisan rhetoric and political opportunism.”
The district “does not condone harassment or bullying of any kind, and it regrets that Brooks had negative experiences with its students and staff members, but this is not a Title VI case.”
The Supreme Court declined review without comment or recorded dissent.
