For Immediate Release
Oct 17, 2008 5:58 PM
Responding to a UFT federal lawsuit filed just weeks before Election Day, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled on October 17 that New York City public school teachers do have the right to put political campaign literature in members’ school mailboxes and on union bulletin boards in areas off limits to students, giving the union a big victory on two of the three issues that prompted the suit. The judge ruled against the union on the issue of members’ right to wear political campaign buttons in schools, but acknowledged that it was a tough call. The union will consider its legal options on that point after the election because the other parts of the ruling preserve members’ rights to communicate with each other on political matters.
Read the court's opinion [PDF].
The ruling in this case is a victory affirming that teachers in schools do indeed have First Amendment rights. We are grateful that the court ruled so quickly in backing the United Federation of Teachers on two of the three issues that led to our filing a federal lawsuit, namely teachers’ constitutional right to communicate with peers about important political matters via literature in school mailboxes and campaign posters on UFT bulletin boards in areas off-limits to students. This ensures that teachers can continue to maintain healthy peer-to-peer communication on important educational and political matters.
On the issue of teachers wearing political buttons in schools, we had already proposed a compromise to the Department of Education in which we would ask our members to not wear them in classrooms. Although the court ruled against us on that issue, it acknowledged that it was as a close call. Given that the overall decision preserves our members’ legal rights, we will wait until after Election Day to decide whether to pursue the matter further.
This exercise in democracy shows that teachers know how to balance their dual roles as objective educators and citizens freely expressing themselves, and we at the UFT are willing to fight for our members’ right to do so.