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Onetime teacher booted from job continues free speech fight
STORY TOOLS 
More from StateWhen one of Deborah Mayer's elementary school students asked her on the eve of the Iraq war whether she would ever take part in a peace march, the veteran teacher recalls answering, "I honk for peace."
Soon afterward, Mayer lost her job and her home in Indiana. She was out of work for nearly three years. And when she complained to federal courts that her free speech rights had been violated, the courts replied, essentially, that as a public schoolteacher, she didn't have any.
As a federal appeals court in Chicago put it in January, a teacher's speech is "the commodity she sells to an employer in exchange for her salary." The Bloomington, Ind., school district had just as much right to fire Mayer, the court said, as it would have if she were a creationist who refused to teach evolution.
The ruling was legally significant. Eight months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had decided in a case involving the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office that government employees were not protected by the First Amendment when they faced discipline for speaking at work about controversies related to their jobs. The Chicago appeals court was the first to apply the same rationale to the classroom, an issue that the Supreme Court expressly left unresolved.
Little protection for teachers
However, legal analysts said the Mayer ruling was probably less important as a precedent than as a stark reminder that the law provides little protection for schoolteachers who express their beliefs.
As far as the courts are concerned, "public education is inherently a situation where the government is the speaker, and ... its employees are the mouthpieces of the government," said Vikram Amar, a professor at UC San Francisco's Hastings College of the Law. Whatever academic freedom exists for college teachers is "much, much less" in public schools, he said.
A recent case from a Los Angeles charter school offers more evidence of the limits that teachers face in choosing curricula or seeking redress of grievances. The school's administrators forbade seventh-graders from reading aloud at a February assembly the award-winning poem "A Wreath for Emmett Till," about a black teenager beaten to death by white men in 1955.
In an online guide to teaching the poem in grades seven and up, publisher Houghton Mifflin recommends telling students that it will be disturbing; administrators said they feared that it would be too much for the kindergartners in the audience and then explained that Till's alleged whistle at a white woman was inappropriate. When social studies teacher Marisol Alba and a colleague signed letters of protest written by students at the largely black school, both teachers were fired.
Demands for accountability
The Mayer ruling was disappointing but not surprising, said Michael Simpson, an assistant general counsel of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. For the last decade, he said, federal courts "have not been receptive to arguments that teachers, both K-12 and higher education, have free speech rights in the classroom."
That's unacceptable, said Mayer, 57, who now teaches seventh-graders in Haines City, Fla. She said she's scraped up enough money, by selling her car, to appeal her case to the Supreme Court, although she doubts that the justices will review it.
"If a teacher can be fired for saying those four little words 'I honk for peace' who's going to want to teach?" she asked. "They're taking away free speech at school. ..."
On the other hand, said Francisco Negron, a lawyer for the National School Boards Association, if teachers were free to express their viewpoints in class, school boards would be less able to do their jobs of determining the curricula and complying with government demands for accountability.
The incident occurred in January 2003, when Mayer was teaching a class of fourth- through sixth-graders at Clear Creek Elementary School. When a student asked a question about taking part in demonstrations, Mayer said, she replied that there were peace marches in Bloomington, that she blew her horn whenever she saw a "Honk for Peace" sign, and that people should seek peaceful solutions before going to war.
A student complained to her father, who complained to the principal, who told Mayer never to discuss the war or her political views in class. She was dismissed at the end of the school year.
Posted by dpennock on May 15, 2007 at 5:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Saying those four words seems pretty minor to me. Downright petty, actually, especially when it was in response to an inquiry from a student. I think the principal didn't like this teacher at all and that the student who complained had parents who were politically connected. Would the teacher have been fired if she had said "I don't honk for peace?" If not, then this is a double standard.
The student who complained is now in the 8th, 9th, or 10th grade. I wonder if he or she will sign up and go to Iraq in 2 to 4 years or if they will instead stay at home and opt for their own individual peace?
Posted by Jacksprat on May 15, 2007 at 8:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I agree with dpennock, there is more to this than just saying "I Honk for Peace" Either the teacher had rattled someone else cage earlier with other statements or she gave that student a hard time. I would never want to be a teacher in todays schools. There are too many complaining about every little thing. When I went to school, many many years ago, the teacher was alway right, if I came home with a complaint it went no where. What has happened to our schools now that a little conversity can't be part of the education plan
Posted by KatieTeague on May 15, 2007 at 8:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It is the students that have no academic freedom. The Ventura College Academic Senate went out of their way last year to make sure that happened. The policy on Academic Freedom for the entire college district was changed last year and it was made less favorable to students - just because a club called Students for Academic Freedom was on campus. How do I know? I was chairperson for the club and fought the changes.
Posted by wdwinder1 on May 15, 2007 at 12:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I wonder what the student's complaint could possibly have been? The teacher wasn't telling them all that they must honk for peace. This is insane.
Now the teacher my daughter had at ACHS that told the whole class to go home and tell your parents to vote for Kerry was inappropriate. But even that is not deserving of being fired.
Posted by Mister_S on May 15, 2007 at 12:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
It is hardly surprising that this ruling will stand. The same "government" that emmployes the teacher is the "government" that waged an unnecessary and counterproductive war in Iraq. In the prelude to this war, the State used it's might to stifle the dissent of individuals, and showered the populace with misleading information and propaganda to further it's goals.
It is an interesting analogy that was made in the article, how a creationist could be fired for refusing to teach evolution. If evangelicals were to come to power, and force their morality/ belief system upon the nation, it could be the proponents of evolutionary science standing in the unemployment line.
I suppose the teacher who was fired should count her blessings. She coulda been a soldier.
Posted by nannyfo1 on May 15, 2007 at 6:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Although I agree that what the teacher said was pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, there is a larger issue here. A teacher teaching their opinions is not free speech, it is subsidized speech. This is the same reasoning that prevents a teacher having a Christmas tree in the classroom during the holidays.
Posted by wdwinder1 on May 15, 2007 at 6:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Stating that she honks for peace is not teaching her opinions. Thats the rub. Teachers should not teach their opinions. Based on what the story says, I don't see where she was doing so.
Posted by culliton on May 17, 2007 at 4:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A counsel for the National office of NEA has weighed in, but I am wondering where the teacher's local and state union affiliates are. This sort of obviously politically motivated firing is exactly the thing unions are around to prevent through negotiating contract language. Does the teacher not have a collective bargaining agreement with a just cause clause? Binding arbitration? This is more a case of unjust dismissal rather than First Amendment, from a labor law standpoint.
Posted by ntsqd on May 18, 2007 at 11:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
She wasn't TEACHING "Honk for Peace", she was ASKED by a student what she would do. That isn't teaching, that is responding to a personal question.
Anyone else hear the march of the Jack-booted thugs?
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