For many parents, school board meetings have become the “front lines” in the fight for their children’s education. At these real-time public gatherings, fed-up moms and dads push back on woke school policies, advocate for their children, and hold local school leaders to account.
And when they do, they aren’t just exercising their civic duty; they’re exercising their constitutional right to free speech.
That right took a direct hit in New York on May 8, 2025, when Attorney General Letitia James and Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa issued a “Joint Guidance on Harassment and Bullying at School Board Meetings.”
The vaguely worded “Guidance Letter” warned school boards statewide that “misgendering” students—using pronouns based on biological sex—or publicly supporting sex-segregated sports and facilities could lead to board members’ removal from office.
Now, a group of parents and school board members, represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, is fighting back in federal court. In Wachter et al. v. Letitia James and New York State Education Department, they are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York to declare the guidance unconstitutional and halt its enforcement.
The school group claims the Letter singles out disfavored viewpoints—e.g., supporting sex-segregated sports and facilities—labeling them as “attacks,” “bullying,” and “harassment,” in an old ploy to recast otherwise protected speech as actionable conduct.
To make matters worse, the lawsuit states, these terms are not defined in the Letter, leaving it to the reader to “divine what speech on gender identity and transgender issues might offend.”
While the wording is vague, however, the Letter’s message to the school board members is clear: Toe the transgender party line or you’re out.
It doesn’t end there. The State can also allegedly punish school board members for what they don’t say. Even if the board members say nothing, according to the lawsuit, the State threatens them with removal for merely allowing parents (or other attendees) to express their disagreement with the approved transgender orthodoxy, “misgender” students, or question the “legitimacy of students’ gender identity.”
In other words, silence is assent.
The State, predictably, purports to protect transgender students’ rights to a “safe and supportive learning environment”—but the school groups say it’s draping a “cloak of silence over school board meetings across New York.”
They say the state guidance forces school board members into an “unconstitutional choice”: either suppress speech they agree with, including their own, or risk removal from office by the Commissioner of Education for permitting contrary viewpoints on gender identity issues.
And when the State threatens school board members, the parents claim it is threatening them, jeopardizing their full speaking time at school board meetings—and their reputations, should they be branded as harassers and bullies.
Of course, this is not the first time the government has used censorship of parents and their school boards as a tool of political power. The New York lawsuit comes nearly five years after the Biden administration sicced federal law enforcement on parents protesting Critical Race Theory at school board meetings. The DOJ’s actions followed a letter (since retracted) from the National School Board Association to Biden, comparing the parents to “domestic terrorists.”
Later, Attorney General Merrick Garland backpedaled, defending the parents’ “totally protected” First Amendment rights to “complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children,” absent threats of violence.
Now, with Attorney General Pam Bondi at the helm—and vowing to shield parental rights—that is the parents’ argument as they fight against the State’s battle to intimidate them and their school boards into silence.
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