School districts can bully employees into submitting to the diversity agenda, a federal court ruled recently.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit recently ruled against two employees of Springfield Public Schools in Missouri who sued for damages after allegedly being forced to undertake “equity training” in 2020.
The two employees, Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley, objected to the training on the grounds that it represented “compelled speech.”
Both were admonished for sharing their personal opinions about race. “At the training, Henderson expressed her view that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020,” according to the court ruling. The presenter told her she was “wrong.”
The presenter told Lumley she “was born into white privilege” after the staff member shared how she was born in a “low-income household.”
Henderson had to select a subjective answer to a question about racism in order to complete the training. The training module asked how to respond to “racism and xenophobia in the classroom.” This may sound like a subjective question that relies on prudential judgment, but not to the “equity” trainers.
Test takers could select “address the situation in private after it has passed.” But if they did, they could not move through the rest of the module. So they were forced to select “address the situation the moment you realize it is happening.”
Both options are defensible, but neither is always objectively right. When someone must select a subjective answer to finish the training, that is, by definition, compelled speech.
Yet, the federal court ruled that the employees did not suffer an injury because they never actually were punished.
“Be professional — or be asked to leave with no credit,” the presenters told attendees.
“No attendee was asked to leave, denied pay, or refused credit because of his or her conduct during the sessions,” Chief Judge Steve Colloton wrote in the 3-0 decision. “No employee discipline resulted from these sessions.”
The logic of the court boils down to this: The plaintiffs were bullied into submission, and so they were not punished. Therefore, there is no real injury since they went along with what was mandated on them, according to the judge.
The court ruling sounds like the stereotype of a mobster threatening damage unless a business owner buys into the protection racket. Nice jobs you got there, Brooke and Jennifer, would be a shame if something were to happen to them!
The court also appeared confused about how diversity bullying works.
The opinion distinguished this scenario from a struck-down Missouri law that required a ballot to list a candidate’s view on term limits. This differed, the judge wrote wrongly, because “the school district’s presenters did not assign an epithet to the plaintiffs akin to a label next to a person’s name on an election ballot.”
One was called “privileged.” That is an epithet.
The court also ruled that “a public employer can require employees to demonstrate as part of their official duties that they understand the employer’s training materials,” based on case law.
However, requiring someone to agree with a subjective decision is different than making sure she knows how long she can take for lunch or how the grading scale works.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The two employees did get one victory: The court ruled the plaintiffs did not have to pay $300,000 attorney fees for the school district, as previously ordered by a district court. They won on this motion because “constitutional law in this area is unsettled and developing,” according to the judge.
When it is settled, the law should recognize how diversity bullying violates free speech.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.