Sixth Circuit Says School Board Violated Speaker’s Free Speech Rights

The Sixth Circuit ruled today that a public school board president likely violated the First Amendment when she shut down a speaker at a board meeting for “calling people names” and spreading “baseless accusations.”

The ruling prohibits the board from restricting the speaker at future meetings. It also marks the first time that the Sixth Circuit applied the “heckler’s veto” doctrine to speech in a limited public forum.

The case, Boddy v. Grech, arose when Darbi Boddy addressed the Xenia (Ohio) Board of Education during the public-comments period of the Board’s meeting. Boddy delivered a prepared speech that criticized the superintendent for reprimanding a Board member who sought an audit of the schools’ supposed teaching of critical race theory. Board President Mary Grech took the microphone from Boddy mid-speech and the Board then recessed.

Boddy sued, arguing that Grech’s and the Board’s actions violated her free-speech rights. The district court ruled that she failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits (and therefore denied her motion for a preliminary injunction). The Sixth Circuit reversed.

The court ruled first that Grech’s and the Board’s actions amounted to impermissible viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum. “The evidence in the record demonstrates that Grech curtailed Boddy’s speech because Boddy shared views critical of the Board and [the superintendent].”

The court went on to say that Grech’s actions ratified a “heckler’s veto” over Boddy’s speech. A heckler’s veto occurs when an official shuts down protected speech based on the audience’s reaction–a First Amendment violation. In this case, the court said that Grech shut down Boddy’s speech in part because of the attendees’ reaction to it. Instead, the court wrote, “she could have used her authority to quiet the crowd instead of Boddy.”

This case is the first time the Sixth Circuit applied the “heckler’s veto” doctrine to a limited public forum. The court said that “its application flows logically from our First Amendment jurisprudence.”