The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, ruled on Sept 25 that a Chicago middle-school teacher who used the N-word in his classroom may have a claim against the Chicago Public Schools, which suspended him for five days without pay, according to the memorandum opinion and order of the court, here. He probably doesn’t have a claim based on the First Amendment, as he originally thought, but he may have a due process claim under the 14th Amendment, the district court found.
Let’s take a closer look at the details. Schools can’t discipline teachers for using the N-word at home or anywhere outside their official duties, of course, but when a teacher uses it in a classroom, the rules change. Basically, when a public schoolteacher is acting in his official capacity in front of a classroom, the school district has every right to regulate what he says. That means, if a teacher just starts dropping the N-word willy-nilly in front of a class, he can be disciplined, as a general rule, if using the N-word in the context he used it is clearly against school policy.
That’s what happened in the classroom of Lincoln Brown, a middle-school teacher at the Murray Language Academy in Chicago. Except, the rules of using the N-word may not have been made clear to him, and that’s what’s causing a bit of a snag.
On Oct 4, 2011, Mr Brown confiscated a note being passed between students in his class that had some rap lyrics on it. Part of the lyrics contained the N-word, and Mr Brown decided he wanted to make an example out of it to show students how words can be used to bully people and offend them. So he discussed with students how the N-word was used in the rap lyrics on the students’ note.
A principal was in the classroom at the time, and Mr Brown was suspended for using the N-word with students, even though it was part of a lesson about the power of words. Mr Brown objected to the suspension, saying the school had violated his right to free speech.
At first glance, the courts probably won’t agree with his claim. A Supreme Court case known as Garcetti v Ceballos, 547 US 410 (2005), held that “the government may regulate public employee speech made pursuant to official duties without triggering any First Amendment scrutiny.” That is, a teacher can be disciplined for speech made while he’s acting as a teacher, and the district can’t be sued for violating his free speech rights. That ruling would normally apply fully to Mr Brown’s case.
But unfortunately for the Chicago Public Schools, the court also found that the district’s rules for what forms of speech are and aren’t allowed may have been fuzzy. If the rules were unclear to Mr Brown, that may be a basis for a lawsuit as well. That is, if the district never clearly notified Mr Brown that it was against school policy to use the N-word to teach the power of words, he may have a case. The district court wasn’t totally convinced the policy was clear, so they ruled his lawsuit should continue.
That’s because the opinion in the Garcetti case says the rule may not apply to “classroom instruction.” The Supreme Court has not ruled further on this issue, nor has it ever held that teachers below the university level have First-Amendment protections. Sure, in the past, K-12 teachers haven’t had much success pursuing First-Amendment claims against school districts over speech they make in class, but in every single case, the teacher was explicitly made aware of what speech was prohibited. That may not have happened here—at least, not specifically with regard to the N-word.
