Under Connetquot Central School District’s new policy, only two kinds of flags could be hung in its classrooms or offices: “the American flag and the New York State flag.”
A federal district court properly dismissed the First and Fourteenth Amendment, and Title VII, claims of three Connetquot Central School District teachers who were ordered to remove LGBTQ+ pride flags and stickers that decorated the walls of their public high school classrooms, the Second Circuit held. Applying Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the federal appeals court concluded that the teachers’ classroom wall decorations constituted speech pursuant to their official duties as government employees, and that the school district did not violate their First Amendment rights when it ordered the teachers to remove them. The teachers also failed plausibly to plead that the district selectively enforced its policies against them because of an impermissible motivation, or that they suffered any adverse employment actions (Dolce v. Connetquot Central School District, No. 25-1197 (2d Cir. Aug. 31, 2026)).
GSA club advisor. One of the plaintiffs is a math teacher at Connetquot Central High School. She is an “open member[] of the LGBTQ+ community” and the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club advisor. For years, she hung two large pride flags on the walls of her math classroom: a progress pride flag, which was “at least twice the size of” the U.S. flag that hung next to it, and a traditional pride flag,...
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed two civil lawsuits against businesses and individuals accused of defrauding federal child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pa...