California teachers are cursing Donald Trump in the classroom. Is it their right?
Several Southern California teachers are facing disciplinary action after fervid anti-Trump outbursts made in the wake of the November election that rattled school communities and generated fierce debate over teachers’ rights to share their political views.
A Moreno Valley teacher was placed on leave this month after a racially charged, expletive-laden rant attacking Trump and his supporters.
Meanwhile, two high school teachers, one in Chino and one in Cerritos, are under investigation for angry outbursts in response to students wearing MAGA gear in class. And a Beverly Hills High School substitute teacher said she was disciplined for her online posts criticizing President-elect Donald Trump and condemning the behavior of students at a MAGA rally on campus.
Each instance has its nuances, but they collectively raise the question: What are teachers’ rights to express their political views? We went to 1st Amendment experts to find out.
Generally speaking, K-12 teachers do not have a 1st Amendment right to share partisan speech in the classroom but are offered broad protections to do so online, said Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the ACLU of Southern California.
If you add curse words and racially charged language on top of partisan classroom speech, teachers are even more likely to face discipline, he added.
In the Moreno Valley incident, the high school teacher used the F-word, called Trump a “rapist draft-dodging coward,” blamed Black and brown men for Trump’s victory and told students that a lot of Latino men — including their fathers, uncles and grandfathers — want to be white.
The school district placed the teacher on leave after a profanity-filled anti-Trump lecture he gave to his history students. Some students have pushed back.
“Clearly the teacher was acting inappropriately with respect to the students,” said attorney Michael Overing, who teaches 1st Amendment rights at USC. “The language was inappropriate. The racist comments were inappropriate.”
At Chino High School, a teacher was recorded telling a student wearing a Trump hat that he was “voting for a freaking rapist” and calling Trump supporters “a bunch of losers” and “fake Christians.” A spokesperson for the Chino Valley Unified School District said the matter was immediately investigated, but the district is unable to comment on potential discipline.
Overing explained that there is a narrow set of circumstances in which teachers can express political opinions.
For example, they are allowed to make an educational point by playing devil’s advocate in a class debate on contemporary American politics. But, he said, if the political speech is not directly relevant to the subject at hand, or isn’t expressed in a respectful, age-appropriate manner, schools probably have a right to restrict it.
Talking politics is welcomed at Cerritos High School within certain parameters, according to a spokesperson for ABC Unified.
Recently, a teacher at the school reportedly stormed out of a classroom because a student was wearing a Trump hat. The spokesperson said in a statement that the incident was under investigation but noted that teachers are encouraged to “use real-life issues, like the recent elections, to have meaningful and age-appropriate classroom discussions with students.”
The rules around political speech differ significantly when it comes to online posts.
Eliasberg said public school teachers have strong 1st Amendment protections to share their political views online — expletives and all. Private schools may have stricter requirements for teachers’ off-campus conduct, but they are still subject to the California Labor Code, which states that it is illegal to fire an employee for their political behavior, he said.
Problems, however, could arise if the online political posts call into question a teacher’s ability to do their job, he said.
“If they make certain statements that could have a very deleterious effect or be very disruptive in the class, then the district may have some ability to engage in discipline,” Eliasberg said. “Part of a teacher’s job is to be non-discriminatory on a variety of different bases: race, religion, sexual orientation and so on.”
In the case of Beverly Hills High School, the substitute teacher, who reported being disciplined and said she no longer works at the school, shared a wide variety of posts generally criticizing Trump. However, she also criticized students who participated in a MAGA rally and said they were harassing and intimidating minority students.
In a statement, Beverly Hills Unified Supt. Michael Bregy said the district could not comment on this specific incident but added that no employee was dismissed in the last month. He also said the district is committed to cultivating a culture of respect where differences are embraced, every perspective heard and all voices valued.
About a dozen Black students expressed their concerns about the Beverly Hills High School MAGA rally, saying they were subjected to harassment and racial slurs at a recent school district Board of Trustees meeting.
“If it’s a general statement about something that happened at the school and the students’ reaction, I think the district’s on very shaky ground to have disciplined a teacher for doing that,” Eliasberg said, referring to the Beverly Hills substitute’s posts.
The principal of Beverly Hills High School told students they could no longer ‘congregate, circle up, shout, jump, etc.,’ according to a message sent out to parents and students.
Overing, on the other hand, said that because the Beverly Hills substitute teacher’s online posts about the rally ignored the proper channels for disciplining students, she could have fallen afoul of district policy.
“Schools have disciplinary boards to be consistent in punishment and to make sure the facts are investigated and that the true culprits are brought to answer,” he said. “A teacher making comments ‘out of school’ is not following protocol.”
One area that’s more clear-cut is the right to wear T-shirts or badges expressing political views in the classroom.
Courts have upheld that schools have a right to ban teachers from engaging in such behavior, but they cannot extend this ban to students, according to the ACLU.
In Cerritos, the teacher who stormed out of the classroom criticized the school for allowing students, and not teachers, to wear political clothing in an email sent to students, Los Cerritos News reported.
“It is not a neutral stance when one group is allowed to express their political views ... and the other side is silenced under threat of losing their job and/or being seriously reprimanded,” she wrote.
The teacher who had an angry outburst at Chino High School also shared frustrations about the differing rules for teacher versus student clothing.
“If I can’t wear a Harris [hat] you can’t wear it,” he said, referencing a student’s Trump hat, according to a recording of the outburst.
In the 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker vs. Des Moines, the court ruled in favor of students’ 1st Amendment rights after students who planned to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War were threatened with suspension. This ruling established the precedent that public school officials can’t censor student speech unless it substantially disrupts the educational process.
Teachers remain under stricter standards, and courts have held that a school may discipline educators for wearing T-shirts or buttons with political messages or slogans, and for putting up political classroom decorations.
