Education Week - October 27, 2021 - 9

as kidnapping and firearms-related
offenses, if they were to involve local
school officials, and bringing a prosecution
as a way to make a public example
and deter others.
" There's a pretty low bar for federal
involvement, " Anderson said.
There's no firm tally of how many
violent or other illegal incidents targeting
school officials have occurred
recently. And whether such activity
is organized remains unclear;
members of the far-right Proud Boys
group have been linked with antimask
protests at school events. (The
FBI does not consider the Proud Boys
a domestic terrorist group, although
Canada calls it a " terrorist entity. " )
In one well-publicized incident,
three men, angry about COVID-19
rules, were arrested and charged by
local law enforcement when they
sought to make a " citizen's arrest "
of an Arizona principal and showed
up at her school with zip ties due to
anger about a COVID-19 quarantine.
So far, there's no public sign of federal
involvement in that case.
Then there are threats and other
actions that aren't protected by free
speech law. A crux of the school
boards association's argument is
that such activity isn't happening at
random.
A creative federal prosecutor, Anderson
said, could get involved if an
ostensibly political group isn't careful,
or actively encourages illegal
activities. The Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)
Act was enacted decades ago in large
part to target organized crime, but
has since been used in a variety of
contexts, Anderson noted.
Cooperation between officials
" If you're a national organization
that's interested in this issue " and
encouraging people to protest school
board policies, Anderson said, " you'd
want to make sure that none of your
employees, and none of your representatives,
are advocating violence or
is too closely connected with someone
who is advocating violence. "
FBI task forces that involve cooperation
with state and local officials,
like the one announced in early October,
are commonplace. But invoking
controversial federal laws to address
school board unrest is not, said Brian
Hauss, staff attorney with the Speech,
Privacy and Technology Project at
the American Civil Liberties Union.
" It's hard to imagine the situation
where the PATRIOT Act would be
the appropriate [tool] in dealing with
that kind of situation, " Hauss said.
The key author of the PATRIOT
Act was more blunt. In an Oct. 12
Wall Street Journal column, former
Republican Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
of Wisconsin said the law
simply " doesn't apply to parents' behavior
at school-board meetings. "
" The memorandum will chill free
speech, undermine civil liberties,
erode public confidence in federal law
enforcement, divert resources from
actual terrorist threats, and weaken
congressional support for key antiterrorism
laws, " Sensenbrenner wrote of
the Justice Department's response.
But Anderson, of RAND, said that
the Justice Department was " basically
calling for a bunch of meetings.
That's the only concrete action I see. "
" If the FBI were systematically investigating
parents involved in protests
at these school board meetings,
that would be a cause for grave concern, "
said the ACLU's Hauss. Yet he
added, " I have not seen anything that
supports the contention that the FBI
is targeting parents based on their
protected First Amendment activity. "
'Vituperative, abusive, and
inexact'
Two Supreme Court court decisions
concerning threats against public officials,
and the extent to which organized
protest movements are responsible
for subsequent violence, could
be important precedents in the current
situation.
In 1966, during the Vietnam War,
Robert Watts said he had been
drafted into the U.S. military. Announcing
that he would not report, he
added, " if they ever make me carry
a rifle the first man I want to get in
my sights is LBJ, " referring to President
Lyndon B. Johnson. Watts was
arrested and tried for violating the
federal statute that makes it a crime
to knowingly and willfully threaten
the life of the president.
But ultimately, in Watts v. United
States, the Supreme Court ruled
Watts' remark was " political hyperbole "
and did not violate the law. In
its 1969 opinion, the court found that,
" the language of the political arena
... is often vituperative, abusive, and
inexact. "
The same year Watts made his
comment about being drafted, a
Mississippi branch of the NAACP
organized a boycott of local businesses
by Black residents in Mississippi's
Claiborne County. The
boycott consisted of picketing and
nonviolent activity, but violence did
occur targeting those businesses.
At one point during the boycott,
Charles Evers, a Mississippi NAACP
field secretary, reportedly said, " if
we catch any of you going in any
of them racist stores, we're gonna
break your damn neck. " In 1969,
white business owners sued the
NAACP and others for lost earnings
stemming from the boycott.
In its 1982 decision in NAACP
v. Claiborne Hardware Company,
the Supreme Court ruled that the
NAACP's protest was protected
under the First Amendment, and that
the group could not be held liable for
individual acts of violence they had
not authorized or directed, even if
it occurred during the boycott. The
Mississippi Supreme Court had previously
ruled that the boycott was a
conspiracy carried out through illegal
force.
(The NAACP v. Claiborne decision
was cited in a recent legal dispute involving
a prominent Black Lives Matter
organizer, DeRay McKesson, and
his culpability for a person's injuries
from violence committed by someone
else at a protest.)
Both Supreme Court decisions,
Hauss said, effectively set a high
threshold for when legitimate political
activity devolves into threats and
violence not protected by the U.S.
Constitution.
A legal distinction also exists between
a person who threatens a
school board member's life while
waving a gun, he noted, and a person
who tells that official " I know where
you live " and attends an organized
protest on a public street outside the
official's house.
Those downplaying the disruptions
at meetings are ignoring the lesson of
the U.S. Capitol riot in January of this
year, said Adam Laats, a professor of
education at the State University of
New York's Binghamton University,
who has studied violence and protests
involving school boards.
He said hoping that people intent
on disrupting public business will
simply calm down and refrain from
illegal violence and threats without
some sort of deterrence is wishful
thinking after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
" To me, this looks like a way for the
executive branch to signal sympathy
for one side of these disputes, " he said
of the Justice Department's response.
" It's a measure of support for beleaguered
and besieged school board
members. "
The message is especially strong,
Laats said, because it came from Attorney
General Merrick Garland, the
nation's top law enforcement officer,
and not U.S. Secretary of Education
Miguel Cardona, even if it has the potential
to " fuel this sense of martyrdom
and unfair usurpation " among
its loudest critics.
But it's the frequent unwillingness
of school boards to be responsive to
and empower parents during the
pandemic, not the idea that they are
disruptive and violent, that should be
the focus of public attention, said Michelle
Walker, a parent and organizer
in Oregon at Open Schools USA. Her
group has criticized schools that have
kept classrooms closed during the
pandemic, among other COVID-19
policies.
The Department of Justice's action,
in her view, is at best a perplexing
distraction that could blow a
handful of unlawful incidents out of
proportion.
" The majority of parents aren't acting
like that. The majority of school
board meetings aren't happening
like that, " said Walker, who switched
her daughter to a private school this
school year to assure access to inperson
learning.
Walker said that some parents who
hear about the Biden administration's
response might be discouraged and
stop participating in local schools altogether,
even if they don't get angry
or claim to be persecuted.
" I don't think we should be wasting
taxpayer dollars on all of this training
and other things that I was reading
about " from the Justice Department,
said Walker.
That sentiment, and stronger ones,
are to be expected, Hauss said.
" When someone is out of power
and unhappy with public officials,
they can vent their anger in very
strong terms, " he said. " If people no
longer feel like they're able to do that,
the concern is, what else might they
resort to? "
At the same time, Hauss stressed,
that principle doesn't address the
profound impact threats can have on
people who are elected to serve their
communities.
" Who's going to want to be a school
board official if you're going to be
afraid for your life? " he said.
Wondering whether to step
away from the job
For all the attention focused on
how teachers are prepared for their
jobs, " We've never had strong school
board training, " including for how to
handle the current surge in divisive
politics, said Jacobsen of Michigan
State University.
Stephens, the school board member
in North Carolina, said she's thinking
about not running for another term,
citing a " need to give some of these
young mothers a chance " to do her
job.
But she also said she would not bow
out of a re-election campaign just because
of the anger being directed at
her and her colleagues.
" They are not running me off the
board. I'm not going to allow anybody
to think that they can run me
off, " Stephens said.
If anyone shows up on her property
to threaten her or worse, Stephens
said, " They might meet their maker. "
| WEBINAR
Best Practices in Virtual Recruiting:
What You Need to Know
Join us for our upcoming
webinar, Best Practices in Virtual
Recruiting: What You Need to
Know, where attendees will:
* Learn effective virtual recruiting
strategies and tips for
promoting your district's jobs
* Hear first-hand the pros and
cons of virtual recruiting
* Get answers about virtual
recruiting specific to
your district's needs
GUESTS:
* STEVE FLAK, Director of
Recruitment, Clark County School
District, Las Vegas, Nevada
* REBECCA LLOYD, Director of
Personnel, Public Schools of
the Tarrytowns, Westchester
County, New York
* EMMA PRILLAMAN, Manager,
Events Planning & Logistics,
Education Week
MODERATOR:
* ELIZABETH HEUBECK,
independent journalist and
communications consultant
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
2 PM ET
https://edw.link/VirtualRecruiting
Content provided by
EDUCATION WEEK | October 27, 2021 | www.edweek.org | 9
https://www.edw.link/VirtualRecruiting http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - October 27, 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 27, 2021
