A parent in an ongoing dispute with the Owasso school district concerning alleged pornography within the school library has received a big authorized battle. A federal choose has issued an injunction that thwarts the school district’s effort to stop the parent from attending school board conferences.
Timothy Reiland, a parent of two kids who attend Owasso Public Schools, lately grew to become upset after his daughter checked out a ebook, “Blankets,” from the Owasso school library. Reiland thought-about parts of the ebook to be pornographic.
As a end result, he started advocating for the school to change its library insurance policies. When the Owasso school board held its Oct. 12 board assembly, Reiland was in attendance, believing the board was ready to vote on a brand new coverage that will prohibit “pornographic content” from the school library.
Instead, the coverage introduced didn’t embody a pornographic restriction and the board members tabled the vote. Board members as an alternative introduced the problem could be taken up at a particular assembly closed to the general public.
Following the assembly, Reiland spoke to Owasso school board member Brent England within the school parking zone. The trade included the usage of profanity however was not violent, in keeping with witness accounts referenced within the choose’s order.
At one level, when England reportedly advised the identical ebook was out there to youth via the general public library system, Reiland responded, “[t]hat’s f—ing b——t . . . I don’t want my kid to get pornography books at a public school.” When the 2 males went to their vehicles, Reiland reportedly mentioned to England, “Have a good evening and I still like you.”
Yet on Oct. 12, Reiland acquired a letter from Owasso Superintendent Margaret Coates informing him that he had “committed one or more acts” that interfered “with the peaceful conduct of activities on District property.” The letter successfully banned Reiland from Owasso Public Schools property (together with sports activities venues) for a interval of six months.
A federal choose famous that it “is clear” that Owasso’s ban was “substantially motivated as a response to Plaintiff’s criticism of the Board’s decision and his petition for a redress of grievances.”
Reiland sued, arguing his First Amendment free-speech rights have been violated by the school. This week, U.S. District Judge John F. Heil agreed to challenge a short lived injunction that prevents the school from limiting Reiland’s entry to school property, discovering that Reiland “is likely to succeed on the merits of his First Amendment claim and this factor weighs heavily in favor of granting preliminary injunctive relief.”
“It is well established that the right to criticize public officials and the right to ‘petition the Government for a redress of grievances’ are protected activities under the First Amendment…” Heil wrote. “Plaintiff’s criticism of the Board’s decision as ‘f—ing b——t,’ while vulgar and arguably unnecessary, is protected speech.”
Heil additionally wrote that Owasso’s effort to ban Reiland from school grounds “has an obvious chilling effect.”
“Under Defendants’ ban, Plaintiff is no longer able to attend OPS Board meetings or meet with OPS Board members on OPS grounds, thus chilling Plaintiff’s ability to criticize Board decisions and to ‘petition the [Board] for a redress of grievances,’” Heil wrote.
The choose additionally famous that it “is clear” that Owasso’s ban was “substantially motivated as a response to Plaintiff’s criticism of the Board’s decision and his petition for a redress of grievances.”
An Oct. 24 memorandum issued by Coates mentioned the ban was imposed “solely” on account of Reiland’s conduct within the school parking zone on Oct. 10.
In his opinion-and-order, Heil wrote that Owasso’s “near-absolute exclusion” of Reiland from all occasions on the school “has the effect of barring him from dropping off and picking up his children from school, attending parent-teacher conferences, and attending his children’s extracurricular activities. In the absence of injunctive relief, Plaintiff’s ban from these events is certainly an ongoing injury not capable of ready quantification.”
In distinction, Heil discovered that Owasso school would endure no significant hurt if Reiland can entry school property together with different members of the general public, writing that “the harms to Defendants are, as Plaintiff states, largely illusory and speculative.”
Heil famous the school retains the correct to take away Reiland from campus if he disrupts any school perform sooner or later.
The Owasso case is likely one of the extra outstanding cases in Oklahoma the place school officers have tried to stop a parent critic from taking part in school coverage. But such incidents have turn out to be extra frequent nationwide.
Notably, in a Sept. 29, 2021, letter to the Biden administration, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) claimed there have been ongoing “attacks against school board members and educators” over school masks mandates and that “many public school officials are also facing physical threats” associated to group considerations over inclusion of Critical Race Theory in classroom instruction. The NSBA letter declared some parent protests “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” and requested that federal law-enforcement officers examine protestors beneath federal anti-terrorism and hate-crimes legal guidelines.
Shortly thereafter, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum saying that he was ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to satisfy with state and native officers to develop “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
The NSBA letter included no particular examples of organized terrorism and plenty of examples cited within the letter amounted to little more than verbal altercations and residents shouting throughout public conferences.
Following the NSBA letter, state school boards associations throughout the nation denounced the NSBA’s motion and plenty of introduced they had been withdrawing from the NSBA.
However, the Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA) has by no means publicly denounced the NSBA’s motion and has maintained its affiliation with the group.
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