By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-02 15:59:53 | Updated at 2026-09-02 16:41:21
59 minutes ago
A school district did not violate the First Amendment rights of teachers whom officials ordered to remove pride flags, a federal appeals court said on Aug. 31.
“We conclude that the teachers’ classroom wall decorations constituted speech pursuant to their official duties as Government employees,” a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said in a unanimous decision. “As a result, the District did not violate their First Amendment rights when it ordered the teachers to remove them.”
The case involves the Connetquot Central School District in New York state and teachers at a school in the district.
After district officials requested one of the teachers remove a pride flag from her classroom in 2022, the teacher and several colleagues protested. Officials then removed all pride flags and any other flags that were not the American or New York state flags, except for flags deemed related to the curriculum, such as Italian flags in Italian classes.
The teachers subsequently placed stickers depicting pride flags on their classroom doors, but officials said that flag stickers could not be placed on classroom doors. One of the teachers, Christopher Dolce, then complained that he did not feel safe at schools in the district.
When officials declined to change the policy, Dolce and two other teachers sued, alleging violation of their First Amendment rights, as well as other claims such as discrimination.
U.S. District Judge Hector Gonzalez in 2025 dismissed the lawsuit, concluding the orders meet the federal threshold for discrimination. Their First Amendment rights were not violated because they were not speaking as citizens on a matter of public concern, he said. The judge pointed to Supreme Court precedent known as Garcetti, which holds that, in those cases, government employees have no cause for First Amendment claims “based on his or her employer’s reaction to the speech.”
The Second Circuit panel agreed.
“Applying Garcetti, we conclude that a public high school teacher’s classroom wall decorations are speech that ‘owes its existence’ to their ‘professional responsibilities,’” Circuit Judge Alison Nathan wrote for the panel, quoting from the 2006 Garcetti ruling.
“After all, teachers decorate their classroom walls as part of their duty to create physical classroom spaces conducive to the curricula they are assigned to teach. Those decorations are thus the Government’s speech, and the First Amendment does not apply to them.”
The case would be different if it involved a pride flag pin on a teacher’s clothing, or a picture of a same-sex spouse, the panel suggested.
The New York employees also did not prove that the district selectively enforced the policies in question against them due to animus against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, or that district officials levied adverse employment actions against them, according to the panel.
“It is gratifying to see that three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals … recognized that this case was about the right of a school district to keep politics and a teacher’s political symbols out of the classroom and not about bigotry,” Brian S. Sokoloff, a lawyer representing the district and district officials, told The Epoch Times in an email.
He also said, “Ask anyone who supports a teacher hanging the political ‘Progress Pride flag’ in a classroom whether he or she also supports the right of a different teacher to hang a ‘blue lives matter’ or ‘MAGA’ flag in a different classroom, and you will see why this case came out as it did.”
A lawyer for the teachers did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
