PRESS RELEASE: Defense of Freedom Institute Urges Appellate Court to Protect Students’ First Amendment Rights, Reject Coerced Speech

WASHINGTON—The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) filed an amicus brief today in Parents Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District urging the court to protect students’ First Amendment rights. The case challenges the Olentangy Local School District’s policies that compel students in the Ohio district to use preferred pronouns for classmate who identify as “transgender,” regardless of students’ deeply held beliefs that biology determines sex.

DFI’s amicus brief argues that Olentangy’s policies, which penalize students for intentional “misgendering,” suffer from the same unconstitutional flaw as preferred pronoun provisions in the Department of Education’s 2024 Title IX rules. Those rules have been enjoined by multiple federal courts, including the Fifth Circuit, where DFI represents the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Idaho, and Montana in Louisiana v. U.S. Department of Education. This landmark lawsuit, co-counseled by DFI, resulted in the first nationwide injunction against the Biden administration’s Title IX rules.

Federal courts have consistently held that government-mandated pronoun use infringes on free speech by compelling individuals to affirm beliefs they fundamentally oppose.

In the brief, DFI states: “Olentangy cannot attempt to deter possible sexual harassment of certain students by creating an environment that is hostile to the beliefs of other students…Arguably, referring to a transgender student by his or her preferred pronoun is a matter of simple courtesy, and maybe some students who reject non-biological based gender identity will do so voluntarily.  However, the government cannot compel polite manners at the expense of the right to free speech.”

The brief also criticizes the district’s proposed solution, which requires students who refuse to use preferred pronouns to avoid pronouns altogether, and instead always use a transgender student’s first name.

Don Daugherty, DFI’s Senior Litigation Counsel, said of the proposed solution, “Besides the practical problem of forcing children to speak strangely, the district’s ‘solution’ still requires students to affirm this transgender orthodoxy.  Thus, the district offers them no real option and compels their speech in violation of the First Amendment.”

To read DFI’s full brief, click here.

To learn more about DFI’s work to protect and defend the First Amendment rights of all Americans, visit DFI’s website at www.DFIPolicy.org.