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A federal appeals court has settled the latest tug-of-war between a student’s First Amendment right to free speech and her school district’s ability to limit that speech in the interests of furthering the school’s educational purposes. In
Robertson v. Anderson Mill Elementary School, 2021 WL 786631 (4th Cir. Mar. 2, 2021) the Fourth Circuit was called upon to decide whether a school district had properly exercised its authority to control the educational process by refusing to publish a fourth-grader’s “essay to society” on LGBTQ equality.
The case involved an assignment given to fourth grade students at Anderson Mill Elementary School in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The teacher required the students to write an “essay to society” on any topic of their choosing. The essays would then be compiled into a booklet and distributed to each fourth grade classroom, and copies would be sent home with the
4th Circuit rules for school that nixed child s essay on acceptance of transgender people
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A federal appeals court has ruled for an elementary school that removed a 10-year-old girl s essay on acceptance of transgender people from an essay collection placed in the classroom and distributed to parents.
In a March 2 opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia, said the South Carolina school and its principal had properly exercised their authority to regulate school-sponsored student speech.
The girl had written: “I don’t know if you know this but peoples view on tran’s genders is an issue. People think that men should not drees like a women, and saying mean things. They think that they are choosing the wrong thing in life. In the world people can choose who they want to be not being told that their diction is wrong. I hope people understand that people can hurt themselves from others hurting their feelings. People need