A Republican high school club has lost its case against Ann Arbor Public Schools for allegedly violating the group's constitutional right to free speech.
The decision on the district's motion for summary judgment was issued last week by federal district judges F. Kay Behm and Curtis Ivey Jr. A court can issue a summary judgment decision in a case without a jury trial, if it finds that the facts are clear, and there is no issue of fact for the jury to decide.
The facts in this lawsuit, the judges said, were clear.
In 2022, The Skyline High School Republican Club requested to use the school's morning announcements to make a number of claims about what the students felt Proposal 3, due to appear on that November's ballot, would do — and to urge voting age students to vote "no" on it. The ballot measure proposed to enshrine reproductive health rights into the state constitution.
The proposed wording of the student club's announcement, according to court documents, read:
Attention Students
Are you interested in joining our efforts to protect the health of women and children by joining us in our fight to defeat Proposal 3?
If proposal 3 is passed it would eliminate health and safety regulations, legalize late term and partial birth abortion, no longer require physicians to perform abortions, and eliminate informed consent laws. If so, email us at skylinerepublicanclub@gmail.com."
Skyline High School administrators rejected the announcement as written, saying it violated district policy against allowing students to use the public address system to advocate for or against a person or issue on the ballot. The district says that is in part to avoid running afoul of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, and in part to keep morning announcements from becoming a disruptive political free-for-all.
Administrators offered several times to work with the club to reword the announcement, the district said, but instead, the group sued. The lawsuit claimed that other clubs, including a women's rights club, were allowed to violate the policy and advocate for positions on ballot issues.
The club was granted a temporary restraining order from federal district court Judge Paul Borman. (The case was later transferred to two other judges.) He ordered that a slightly revised announcement, leaving out the words "join our fight to defeat," be read the morning of November 7, a day before the midterm election. The high school complied.
Proposal 3 later passed by a double-digit margin.
More than two and a half years later, Ann Arbor Public Schools won the case. The ruling said the district had, in fact, applied its policy to all groups equally, including the student women's rights club.
"The record reflects that the Skyline Republican Club was permitted to submit announcements under the same conditions as any other club, and the single time that Plaintiffs challenge[d] Skyline’s denial of an announcement, Defendants have shown that Skyline gave the same treatment to another group with an opposing political viewpoint on the same issue."
Neither side's attorneys in the case have issued a comment regarding the decision, nor has Ann Arbor Public Schools.
