Sometimes Freedom is Free

 Sometimes Freedom is Free

 

A group of parents and students started a Facebook page as a “parent discussion group”.   The page grew to 180 members of students and staff.   Mostly it was derogatory of the school district.  It often also contained mis-information about the school calendar, snow days and/or illegal actions by school administrators.

District administrators argued that the public often confused this page with the official district page.   To try to combat the situation, the school district had it logo trademarked.  It then sent a strongly worded threatening letter to the FB page administrator demanding that 1) it stop using the logo of the district and 2) it shut down the page.  The letter threatened legal action if the page were not shut down.

The parents pushed back and sued the school district for retaliating against them for engaging in their right to free speech.   Gotta love America we sue over hot coffee that is hot.

The Superintendent filed for summary judgement against the suit, claiming that she had qualified immunity on the claims raised.

Not so said the judge.   No one is immune from violating the right to free speech.

Specifically the judge said the contents of the page were clearly free speech.  And no, it did not matter that the free speech contained wrong or incorrect information.  Americans are free to be wrong in their speech.

Next the judge said there was no trademark infringement because the folks managing the FB page did not use it to sell anything.

Thirdly, the court said that any reasonable fact finder would conclude the goal of the Superintendent’s action was to curtail constitutionally protected free speech on social media.  That behavior is not allowed.

Finally, the court ruled that at the time of the Superintendent’s challenged action, her behavior was clearly in retaliation for the constitutionally protected free speech.

So in the end, the parents and students were free to continue with their Facebook page without fear of retaliation.  Two primary take-aways from this story.   Mainly, don’t believe everything you read in social media or on the Internet and yes, Virginia, there is constitutionally protected free speech in our country.