‘Pride’ and Black Lives Matter Flags to Become School Symbols
A Colorado school board is poised to make the “Pride” and Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags symbols of their public school district — just one month after trying to ban them.
Durango School District 9-R ordered teachers to remove the flags from schools in October, The Durango Herald reports, after a parent complained they violated the district’s ban on political speech. The edict elicited fierce backlash, including a student walkout, a public protest and animated pushback at a board meeting.
Last week, at least three board members expressed new willingness to exempt the “Pride” and BLM flags from the political speech ban.
The only problem? That pesky First Amendment.
Public school districts like Durango are allowed to ban some types of speech, like political speech, but must apply such restrictions equally.
That’s why the district’s lawyers advised it to remove “Pride” and Black Lives Matter flags in October. Durango can’t ban some kinds of political expression and not others without violating the First Amendment.
Importantly, neither Durango’s school board nor its lawyers deny the contested flags constitute political speech. Most people understand “Pride” flags symbolize support for gender ideology, including policies like allowing minors to undergo transgender medical interventions. BLM is an explicitly political movement geared, in part, toward disrupting the nuclear family.
Instead of trying to defend the “Pride” and BLM flags as apolitical, board members Rick Petersen, Kristin Smith and Katie Stewart say they could draft and sign a resolution endorsing the flags as speech consistent with the district’s educational and cultural goals.
“By designating it as government speech and adopting [the flags] as symbols of our school district, it avoids a First Amendment problem,” Petersen explained in last week’s board meeting.
The line between government and private speech was most recently delineated Shurtleff, et al., v. City of Boston, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that found public organizations have more leeway to express their own speech than limit the speech of others. Writing for the majority, then-Justice Stephen Breyer explained:
Denver Public School District (DPS) successfully used Shurtleff to defend displaying the “Pride” flag in its schools. A DPS parent had sued the district for displaying the flag, calling it discriminatory and asking they be taken down or paired with “Straight Pride” flags.
A magistrate judge dismissed the suit in August, writing,
DPS’ victory doesn’t mean Durango’s path forward will be easy. The district’s lawyers do not appear to endorse the board’s proposed resolution, according to the Herald. Petersen suggests one wrong move could bankrupt the district:
Did you catch that? The district decided to endorse the “Pride” and BLM flags in accordance with their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging resolution. Published in 2021, this document reads, in part:
As the Daily Citizen frequently demonstrates, “social justice” means different things to different groups. Black Lives Matter, for instance, believes social justice involves defunding the police, monetary reparations for slavery, and teaching “anti-racism” in elementary schools.
Education requires teaching skills that allow children to grow into productive, engaged members of society. Teaching children to support and inform specific policy agendas isn’t education — its indoctrination.
Durango’s board seems content to further this indoctrination to avoid public backlash. That’s dereliction of duty.
The proposed resolution could take six months for board members to draft. In the meantime, “Pride” and BLM flags will be allowed to stay. The Daily Citizen will keep you updated on this developing story.
To learn more about politics and gender ideology in schools, check out Focus on the Family’s Back-to-School resource for busy parents.
Additional Articles and Resources
Students’ Test Scores Tank After School Consults ‘Woke Kindergarten’
BLM Coloring Book Teaches Elementary Students the Nuclear Family is Racist
Five Things for Christians to Remember During ‘LGBT Pride Month’
Back to School With Sexualized Lessons
Is it ‘Book Banning’ to Keep Sexually Explicit Books out of Schools?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Washburn is a staff reporter for the Daily Citizen at Focus on the Family and regularly writes stories about politics and noteworthy people. She previously served as a staff reporter for Forbes Magazine, editorial assistant, and contributor for Discourse Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper at Westmont College, where she studied communications and political science. Emily has never visited a beach she hasn’t swam at, and is happiest reading a book somewhere tropical.
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