It took me a few years to get my school district (SAU73) to figure out that Agents of Government (elected and bureaucratic officials) cannot abrogate a person’s First Amendment Free Speech rights. Frankly, it got frustrating at times, but the school board finally acknowledged the error of their ways (to avoid the threat of another lawsuit if they didn’t). They rewrote their Policy JBAB so that TransPronouns were no longer mandatory and the policy would not infringe on either the US or NH Constitution.
And yes, part of my frustration was that these people WERE IN CHARGE OF THE SCHOOLS TEACHING OUR CHILDREN (that they were only allowed to use words approved by the government). And some of my property taxes went to the District’s attorney for the over $14,000 in invoices she sent them.
So it was nice to see that Vivian Geraghty, a teacher in the Jackson Local School District (JLSD), got $450,000 in compensation for teaching them that it just isn’t cool to mess with people’s Constitutional Rights (reformatted, emphasis mine):
Ohio teacher who refused to use students’ preferred pronouns awarded $450K in settlement
An Ohio teacher who refused to use students preferred pronouns will take home $450,000 in a legal settlement with the local school district. Vivian Geraghty brought the suit against the Jackson Local School District, about 20 miles south of Akron, in 2022 after she was told to resign from a middle school language arts position over her stance on the matter.
“The school tried to force Vivian to accept and repeat the school’s viewpoint on issues that go to the foundation of morality and human identity, like what makes us male or female, by ordering her to personally participate in the social transition of her students,” Logan Spena a legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization representing Geraghty told local NBC4 Ohio.
“The First Amendment prohibits that abuse of power, and Jackson Local School District officials have learned that comes at a steep cost,” Spena added.
The settlement, reach last month, came after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled in August that the school’s pronoun policy was “not neutral” and that forcing Geraghty to use preferred pronouns was a form of “compelled speech.”
Part of being Woke, especially in a seat of Power (either by election or being hired into such a powerful position), is the application of Woke Ideology as if that is all that matters. In this case, according to Critical Race Theory, you are an Oppressor of an Oppressed minority and, in compensation, must do what you are told. In this case, a minor child can tell you to call they/them/it/kitty/et al, and the District will punish you if you don’t.
The District tried hard until it, in turn, was effectively Oppressing Vivian by overstepping (or stepping on) her Constitutional Rights.
Good for her for sticking up for herself – and others who might not quite have the same fortitude as she for taking on this fight. The dirty little secret is that FAR too few of us are willing to stand up to the Woke Mafia and sneer at their faces. It seems that the gumption that our Founding Fathers had in standing up to a tyrannical King is being bred out of us.
