Recently, a high-school student in North Carolina was hit with a suspension merely for asking a question in which he used the term “illegal alien.” The horror!
In this Liberty Unyielding post, Hans Bader provides the background and some legal analysis. He writes, “The student’s use of the term ‘illegal alien’ didn’t reflect any hostility to immigrants — he was just giving an accurate example in response to a teacher’s question. But even if it had reflected anti-immigrant sentiment, it was still protected by the First Amendment. There is no ‘antiracism’ or “anti-immigrant” exception to the First Amendment. For example, a federal appeals court ruled that a professor’s racially-charged, anti-immigration emails were protected by the First Amendment against a racial harassment lawsuit, were they were not aimed at any particular Hispanic employee who chose to sue over them, in Rodriguez v. Maricopa Community College District, 605 F.3d 703 (9th Cir. 2010).”
Sure, but what’s the law to today’s DEI zealots in our education system? They love using their power to punish those who might harbor wrong thoughts.