Courts

Missouri School Employees Who Sued Over Optional Race Primer Get Dismissed As Frivolous

Do you know how high the threshold for frivolousness is?

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Missouri, largely known for its toasted ravioli and those two lawyers who threatened peaceful protestors with guns, has a history of racism. It is so engrained that racism is embedded in the civil engineering. For example, it is hard to get the texture of the city without understanding the Delmar Divide. Racial tensions hit a recent smoke point in the state when officer Darren Brown shot an unarmed Black teenager named Michael Brown. For those of you who never made the connection that Ferguson was in Missouri, it’s okay. Americans tend to be bad at geography. They also tend to be bad with history and the context it gives to our day-to-day lives. Which is why it’s understandable that a Missouri school would give a crash course on why and how the long history of racism is relevant for us today. What isn’t clear is how two school district employees gathered that learning about power dynamics violated their free speech. From Reuters:

A U.S. appeals court panel on Thursday seemed unlikely to revive claims that a Missouri school district violated staff members’ free-speech rights by requiring them to attend an anti-racism training that discussed white privilege and white supremacy.

A three-judge 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in St. Louis heard oral arguments in an appeal by two white employees of the Springfield, Missouri, school district of a judge’s ruling that dismissed their lawsuit as frivolous.

The big threshold that the plaintiffs failed to cross was that the training wasn’t required — several people decided to opt out with no consequence. That’s not to say that they couldn’t have benefited. After a Missouri teacher didn’t get why he was in hot water for repeatedly using slurs in his classroom, primers like this could help a lot of school staff be better toward their students. The Missouri high school quarterback who is suing for the right to transfer schools because of his coach’s alleged racism and homophobia might have been better off if his coach sat through the class. Maybe the anti-racism training could have been helpful for empathizing with a student who confides in a teacher after a run-in with the police — even the DOJ’s 2015 research suggests that the police in Ferguson prey viciously on Black residents. Since then, things have gotten worse.

Since when does the right to free speech protect us from learning history in school? Sure, an all-white Missouri school board decided to remove Black history courses from the curriculum last December, but that’s not a First Amendment issue. Perpetuating racism and disenfranchisement, sure, but that better fits under the 14th Amendment’s jurisdiction. What’s left of it, anyway.

US Court Leery Of Free-Speech Challenge To School’s Anti-Racism Training [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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