At the end of April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Brandi Levy, a high school cheerleader, who posted Fuck school fuck cheer fuck softball fuck everything to Snapchat in 2017 and was kicked off the team for a year. The words were superimposed over a photo showing B.L. and her friend with their middle fingers raised, members of her legal team explained. The courts ruling in this case could potentially disrupt the established principle that students do not lose their right to free speech at the schoolhouse gate, as the court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969. Mother Jones called Levys case the most important student free speech case to come before the Supreme Court in a half-century.
One notable figure on todays free speech beat, Michael Powell of The New York Times, surely missed an opportunity to highlight this case in his story, published this weekend, on the alleged wavering of First Amendment defense at the American Civil Liberties Union. In Powells telling, the organization is locked in an unprecedented, perhaps irreconcilable struggle between free speech and social justice. Its national and state staff members debate, often hotly, whether defense of speech conflicts with advocacy for a growing number of progressive causes, including voting rights, reparations, transgender rights and defunding the police, Powell writes. As a result, he claims, the organization has fallen down on its principles. One hears markedly less from the A.C.L.U. about free speech nowadays. Its annual reports from 2016 to 2019 highlight its role as a leader in the resistance against President Donald J. Trump. But the words First Amendment or free speech cannot be found. Nor do those reports mention colleges and universities, where the most volatile speech battles often play out.
Much the same, however, could be said about some glaring omissions in Powells own missive. What he pitches as a document of an existential threat to the organizations commitment to free speech should be seen for what it is: a culture war in 1As clothing. Its a familiar trick, one which everyone from Josh Hawley to Abigail Shrierwhose anti-trans work Powell referenceshas tried in the immediate post-Trump era. By comparison, Powell aims for a lighter touch, but his omissionsof history, of the organizations present caseloadreveal the storys true concern: a certain kind of speech, for a certain kind of person.
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The New York Times' Culture-War Definition of Free Speech - The New Republic