Bacon's Rebellion

Last night the Albemarle County School Board voted 5 to 1 to adopt a policy prohibiting student organizations said to promote or endorse violence, harassment or hatred. Critics noted that the policy would be used to ban noncurricular student organizations. including TPUSA, from hosting guest speakers during the school day. Here follows a letter (minus footnotes) submitted yesterday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to the school board. — JAB

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan nonprofit that defends free speech nationwide, is concerned by proposed revisions to the Albemarle County School Board’s policy governing student activities and organizations. As written, the amended policy would violate the First Amendment, which protects students’ right to free expression. The
proposal also follows controversy surrounding a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) club’s speaker invitation, raising serious concerns that the Board is targeting the group because of its views or the views of its guest speakers. FIRE calls on the Board to reject the proposed revisions and to respect and uphold students’ First Amendment rights.

I. Factual Background

Last September, the TPUSA chapter at Western Albemarle High School (WAHS) arranged to host guest speaker Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation, at a regular lunchtime meeting for an event titled “Two Genders, One Truth.” WAHS Principal Jennifer Sublette initially ordered
the club to cancel the event because the topic was too “complex,” “controversial,” and “mature.”

The Founding Freedoms Law Center then wrote Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS) to object to the cancellation, explaining that it constituted unlawful viewpoint discrimination. The letter observed that another student organization—the Gender and Sexuality Alliance club—was permitted to hold lunchtime meetings addressing related issues from an opposing perspective.

The ruling casts doubt on similar law in Virginia.

by Hans Bader

Virginia attorney general Jay Jones is being sued over a Virginia law that bans landlords from discriminating against people who use federal housing vouchers to pay their rent. Landlords often don’t like accepting those vouchers because they have to waive their Fourth Amendment privacy rights against warrantless inspections and deal with burdensome government red tape.

Requiring landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers is unconstitutional. A state appeals court in New York has reluctantly struck down a similar law in New York state, finding it violates the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times reports:

A New York State appeals court on Thursday invalidated a key protection for low-income tenants, ruling that a state law that bars landlords from discriminating against people who use federal housing vouchers to pay rent is unconstitutional.

The unanimous ruling, by a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division’s Third Judicial Department, acknowledged that the goal of the law was “laudable”…But the court sided with the landlord who had appealed the case, asserting that requiring him to accept vouchers under the federal program commonly known as Section 8 violated his constitutional rights.