The Case Of The Irish Teacher And Pronouns Is Ridiculous. The Cases Coming To Our Shores Are Not.
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Irish eyes are rolling:
Late last week former tennis star and current activist Martina Navratilova posted a supportive tweet about an Irish teacher who has collectively spent more than a year behind bars because he won't use a student's preferred pronouns. Even if you're someone like me who thinks teachers should defer to parents on these questions, at least in the public sector where pluralism, not sectarian viewpoints is the norm, 500 days in jail sure seems like a lot?
Except there is so much more to the story - and Navratilova subsequently deleted her tweet. (She's now controversial but I'm generally a fan, if you're of a certain age you remember what a pathbreaker she (and her coach) were. The fact that the two of them are being called transphobes for questioning biological males playing girls' and women's sports shows how completely off the rails that debate is.)
Anyhow, in this instance the teacher in question is not some victim of the "woke mob," activist zealots, or increasing restrictions on speech in the U.K. The student in question isn't even in this teacher's classes, so he went out of his way to find trouble and gin this problem up. The contempt charges stem from trespassing and harassment of school officials, not pronouns. And the guy seems to want to be locked up to make a point, authorities have tried to avoid it. Even the Westboro Baptist guys, yeah those guys, think he's gone too far. Seriously, they do.
That's from an article in The Spectator walking through just how stupid this case is in terms of its fact pattern and why this isn't even a free speech case at this point.
From The Spectator summing it up:
Closer to home here in the states there are some similar cases in courts now. They involve public school teachers who refuse to use pronouns but otherwise are in good standing and don't face accusations of bullying or harassment of students or other adults. Much cleaner fact patterns. These cases are not stupid; they raise serious contested issues. For instance, teachers who say, 'I will use a student's name of choice but not pronouns' and have not been accused of harassment. These are what Supreme Court types call "clean vehicles," because there are not extraneous circumstances, like harassment, to confuse the issue. Standing remains an issue in some instances, but some teachers have been disciplined and so have standing. These cases are serious and potentially impactful on K-12 schools. The incoming Trump Administration may also weigh here.
The law here is evolving, and at the higher ed level one federal court case affirmed some teacher rights to not engage in compelled speech. But as we've discussed around here, at the K-12 level teachers' free speech rights are more constrained than you might think. Teachers follow district and state requirements about what you do and don't teach.
This issue with pronouns makes people uncomfortable because it cuts straight to first principles. You have people uneasy with the issue overall. You have people who say, 'of course public school teachers should teach what the state or school district dictates' but then are uneasy on pronouns specifically because they or their fellow travelers don't like trans people. You have parents' rights types who are fine with schools being restricted from using pronouns without a parental consent but then recoil when a parent shows up wanting new pronouns for their kid used and respected by the school. You have people who can't say enough about teacher rights and agency except in this particular instance given the politics. It's a bit of a mess.
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But make no mistake, the consequences here are real and non-trivial. If courts find a First Amendment right for teachers to not use preferred names or pronouns for religious or speech reasons, it will be hard to figure out where that right ends. If you have a right not to use a pronouns as a matter of conscience, then what about teaching things in the curriculum? Science? Even some historical questions? Sure some people favorable to a teacher right here are starting to say the distinction between pronouns and creationism is obvious. But it is not. This will open a Pandora's box of questions that cut to the heart of what it means to be a public school.
I'm surprised these questions are not getting more attention. Maybe the courts will shut it all down as some argue, but I don't see it. It reminds me of school choice religious liberty cases that many people were confident would go nowhere and are now case law. The media has studiously avoided it for the most part. It was a core part of the debate in Virginia but everyone just thought it was easier to call people names than admit there are complicated issues at play. Maybe it's the map problem we've discussed? Perhaps because of the odd bedfellows and awkwardness issues I mentioned above? Regardless, it's hard to see the core questions getting resolved short of Supreme Court cases.
The stakes for students and teachers are different. I'm much more deferential to student free speech rights than teachers because teachers, in public schools, are there to teach in a public setting that has to be broadly accessible. Students are compelled to be there and should not be forced to engage in compelled speech.* And anti-bullying rules cover most of this where the lines between compelled speech and harassment are not so hard to discern. For teachers though, the stakes are different and potentially precedent setting in ways with substantial consequences downstream.
Stay tuned. If and when these K-12 cases hit the appellate courts and Supreme Court they won't be as ridiculous as this spectacle in Ireland.
*This will have school choice implications. It's really untenable to want to compel attendance in certain kinds of schools for students but then also compel speech.