In a 1943 United States Supreme Court case which held that a West Virginia School Board could not compel objecting students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Robert Jackson wrote: "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein". That case and that sentiment have formed the basis of the law prohibiting the government from compelling speech since that time.
Eighty years after that West Virginia case, a Federal Court in Virginia has applied the law against compelled speech to Stonewall Jackson High School. In this case, the Court granted summary judgment to a group of parents of student athletes who objected to the name. According to the student athletes and the Court, by requiring the students to wear uniforms bearing the name "Stonewall Jackson," the school was requiring the student athletes to endorse Jackson's racist beliefs.
Some background is in order. In 2020, the County School Board of Shenandoah County Virginia voted to retire the name "Stonewall Jackson High School" and replace it with the name "Mountain View High School." This was done pursuant to a resolution "condemning racism." On May 10, 2024, a newly elected School Board voted 5-1 to restore the name "Stonewall Jackson High School." One Board member explained the decision like this: "[the topic of racism, O I don't really like to talk about it a lot because I don't believe in it.]" No word on whether that Board member also doesn't believe in gravity.
The new school name prompted the lawsuit. In considering the issue, the Court noted that expert witnesses on both sides of the case reported that the name "Stonewall Jackson" has historically been used to signify racial exclusion in the particular context of naming public schools. Naming schools after Confederate leaders began to express a distinct message about "massive resistance" to school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954. According to one of the experts, "[t]hroughout the South, one way to protest integration and calls for equal rights was to name a school after a Confederate ... to send a very particular message about the need to sustain a racial hierarchy." A spike in schools named in honor of Confederate leaders occurred between 1955 and 1965. The high school in this case was founded in 1959 and was all white.
In granting the student athletes' motion for summary judgment, the Court ruled "there is no genuine dispute as to any fact material to the speech element of compelled speech. Even construed in the light most favorable to the School Board, the record here contains unique facts indicating both that the name 'Stonewall Jackson High School' was intended to convey a message and that the name 'Stonewall Jackson High School' in fact conveys a message."
The Court also found that there was no way to accommodate the affected students, given various league rules requiring that all members of a team wear the same uniform.
In its conclusion, the Court wrote: "[b]y reinstating the name 'Stonewall Jackson High School' and thereby compelling students to advance the School Board's chosen message favoring 'Stonewall Jackson' through the conduct of extracurricular activities rendered expressive by that name, the School Board has violated plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, against compelled speech."
It will be interesting to see if this decision survives on appeal. If it makes it to the Supreme Court, I suspect President Trump's Solicitor General will come in on the side of the School Board. Given President Trump's recent winning streak in the Supreme Court, that does not bode well for this decision. Where is Justice Jackson when you need him?
