The federal lawsuit brought by Shenandoah County students and the NAACP against the county school board had its first evidence review hearing this week in Harrisonburg. WMRA's Calvin Pynn was in the courtroom, and filed this report.
As WMRA previously reported, several students and the NAACP are suing the board after they voted to restore the names of Confederate generals to two schools last year.
A trial in the case that was set to begin this week has been delayed. Rather, the question around free speech, as it applies to public schools, was at the center of Tuesday's hearing, as both parties filed cross motions regarding First Amendment claims in the lawsuit.
Attorneys representing the school board argued that their decision to restore the names of the schools falls under government speech, as the board members are elected officials. According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, the government speech doctrine holds that a government is not required to be neutral when expressing its own opinion. They also argued that the athletic team name for Stonewall Jackson High School – "The Generals" – is protected as school-sponsored speech, which is typically applied in cases regarding school’s regulation of student speech, as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.
On the other hand, attorneys representing the students and the NAACP argued that the name could be classified as compelled speech as students who wish to compete in athletics are required to wear uniforms bearing the team name which, by association, is tied to Stonewall Jackson's service in the Confederate Army and the country's history of slavery.
During the hearing, Judge Michael Urbanski was skeptical of both arguments. He could not identify a clear educational purpose justifying the defendant's claim of school-sponsored speech, but also struggled to find a specific point in the plaintiff’s argument that classified the team names as compelled speech, as they remained "The Generals" following the renaming of the schools in 2020.
Urbanski ended Tuesday's hearing saying that he plans to issue an opinion on the First Amendment claims from both parties, which has yet to be published as of Wednesday afternoon. According to court records, the trial originally scheduled for this week has now been scheduled to begin on December 8.
