After an appeals court in October sided with a chapter of the group Moms for Liberty, a U.S. district judge Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the Brevard County School Board from enforcing challenged restrictions on public comments at board meetings.
A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in October said parts of a school-board policy targeting “abusive,” “obscene” and “personally directed” speech violated the First Amendment.
But in an eight-page order Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton said the board had not changed or eliminated the policy.
Attorneys for the Moms for Liberty chapter and other plaintiffs filed a request Friday for a temporary restraining order to prevent enforcement of the policy at a school-board meeting scheduled Tuesday night, according to Dalton’s order.
Dalton granted a temporary restraining order that will remain in effect until Feb. 4.
“Essentially, plaintiffs have more than established a substantial likelihood that they will succeed on the merits of their claims — they have already succeeded (at the appeals court).” Dalton wrote. “Simply because the board has not yet had time to adopt a new policy does not mean that they can keep enforcing the old unconstitutional one in the meantime.”
Dalton also wrote that the plaintiffs have “established imminent irreparable” harm. “A school board policy that chills a plaintiff’s right to speak at future meetings and could prevent that speech altogether causes irreparable injury,” Dalton wrote. “Here, plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to suffer immediate and irreparable harm due to the potential for defendants to continue enforcing the unconstitutional policy at the scheduled board meeting tonight (Tuesday).”
The Moms for Liberty chapter, a conservative group, and individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in 2021 alleging that school-board policies chilled speech at meetings.
The legal battle has played out as school boards in various parts of Florida and the country have become battlegrounds during the past few years about contentious issues such as restricting or eliminating access to certain school-library books.
Attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech and the Defense of Freedom Institute, which are national groups, and a Jacksonville lawyer have represented the plaintiffs, according to a court docket.
