In a victory for First Amendment rights, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a group of school employees who objected to so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” training.
According to a release from the Goldwater Institute, which joined the suit as a “friend of the court,” school officials in Springfield, Missouri, forced teachers to endure a DEI “training” session declared things such as “calling the police on black people” or “treating kids of color as adults” are forms of “white supremacy.”
According to Goldwater, it all began when the teachers were ordered by the district to attend a meeting where they were ‘taught’ what was then the ‘up-to-date’ social justice dogma.
“Specifically, that America’s legal, economic, social, and cultural institutions are saturated with ‘covert white supremacy’ — manifested in everything from ‘claiming reverse-racism’ to the idea of ‘colorblindness,'” the Instructors at the session told attendees that white people are inherently ‘privileged,’ and that they were morally obligated to not only to ‘acknowledge your privileges’ but to renounce that ‘privilege,’ and to undertake, at all times, to eliminate their inherent, and even subconscious, racism.”
According to Goldwater, two school employees objected to those assertions but were told their views were ‘confused and wrong,’ and that they ‘needed to work on [themselves],’ the release reads. “When they persisted, they were told that their disagreement was like ‘having a conversation about football and you bring up baseball’ — whatever that means. In the end, they were forced to shut up and stay silent. Worse, they were required to take a test in which the ‘correct’ answers were those prescribed by DEI orthodoxy. When, for example, one employee was asked on the exam how including DEI concepts in the class will improve the educational environment, she wanted to answer that it does not, because she thinks people should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. But that was considered an ‘incorrect’ answer.”
The employees sued, represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, arguing that the DEI “training” requirement violated their First Amendment rights.
Appeals court overturns DEI decision of local court
“Amazingly, the trial judge threw the case out as ‘frivolous’ and punished them by imposing a massive attorney fee award against them,” the release reads. “When they appealed, the Goldwater Institute filed a friend of the court brief, joined by the Kansas Justice Institute, the Mississippi Justice Institute, and the Show Me Institute, arguing that in fact DEI is inherently compulsory, because under DEI theory, to disagree with the assertion that white people are inherently racist is automatically deemed racist — and being labeled racist is, of course, career suicide for any public school employee.”
The Eighth Circuit reversed that decision entirely.
“The ‘training’ session, the court explains, forced employees to pledge allegiance to DEI and censored them from expressing their disagreement,” Goldwater said. “Not only did the school district ‘force acceptance or adoption of the school’s views,” but it threatened to punish those who voiced opposition — even while it claimed that they could speak their minds. ‘The plaintiffs self-censored to avoid negative consequences that the school district itself repeatedly said it would impose — the employee would be asked to leave the training; the employee would not receive credit; and … if this happened, their pay would be docked because completion of the training was mandatory.'”
KJI — which, like the Sentinel is owned by the Kansas Policy Institute also joined the lawsuit.
KJI Director of Litigation Sam MacRoberts said he was pleased with the decision.
“This is America,” MacRoberts said. “The government can’t force you to agree with things you don’t agree with. The Eighth Circuit got it right.”
