Thread by @JeffreyASachs

Assuming this is true (I don’t know if it is/is not, that’s irrelevant), this is a good example of unconstitutional compelled speech. There’s no need to invent new laws to deal with it. Existing law and court precedent like Barnette is more than capable.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1369741283594473472

Ah, I see from some of the replies that this is the Clark case in Nevada. I wrote a bit about it in one of my recent Arc pieces. It’s a lot more complicated than Ramaswamy’s tweet suggests — which makes sense, since it’s just a tweet.

Schools can have a good, constitutional reason to compel speech. The point of Barnette (powerfully described by Sean’s Shiffren) is that this speech should not interfere with the intellectual autonomy of students as thinking agents.

scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewconten…

But distinguishing THAT sort of compelled speech from, say, reciting the Gettysburg Address as part of a unit designed to cultivate civics values is very tricky. Barnette is a much easier case: a daily pledge. Pedagogical content is trickier.

Robert Post has a new piece on this btw. Compelled speech jurisprudence is a real mess, made much worse recently by NIFLA v Beccara, but he cuts through it nicely.

@jadler1969 this is your wheelhouse, isn’t it? What do you think of this case?

*Seana Shiffren