According to the lawsuit, the St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education told Chester Asher he’d been warned about being “disrespectful” while speaking at public before issuing a six-month ban(Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).
An education advocate filed a federal lawsuit Monday against St. Louis Public School Board alleging it illegally banned him from meetings and district property.
Chester Asher, founder of Coalition for STL Kids, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Missouri with the help of the First Amendment Clinic at Washington University in St. Louis. He alleges the ban violated his constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
Named as defendants in the suit are the school district, board and board president, Antionette Cousins.
According to the lawsuit, the St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education told Asher he’d been warned about being “disrespectful” while speaking at public before issuing a six-month ban. While the ban started in March and concluded in September, Asher said the lawsuit “isn’t just about me and my individual six-month suspension.
“It’s about teachers, parents and others who tell me they’re afraid of retaliation if they speak up at board meetings about what’s concerning them,” Asher told The Independent.
A regular attendee at board meetings for two years, Asher has often spoken during public comment sessions, criticizing the board and administration over budget decisions, staff turnover and test scores that show the majority of Black students in the district reading below grade level, among other issues.
Case law, the litigation states, supports a “profound, national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
Such speech, “may not be censored because it is critical of government officials, employees or policies, even if such criticisms are expressed in ways that are unpleasant or offensive,” according to the lawsuit. “Restrictions on speech in limited public forums must be both reasonable in light of the forum’s purpose and viewpoint neutral.”
The board’s public comment rules require speakers remain “respectful” and refrain from “speaking derogatorily about anyone,” the lawsuit says. These restrictions, along with a prohibition on “personal attacks” are “viewpoint discriminatory restrictions on speech and are unconstitutional on their face,” the lawsuit states.
Among the examples cited in the lawsuit of how Asher’s speech was passionate, yet protected, include criticizing the district for hosting the U.S. education secretary at a city public school where the majority of children were struggling to read and do math at grade level.
“You all had the audacity to bring the secretary of education to a school where 85% of the kids can’t read on grade level. Did you all tell them that? Where 95% of the kids aren’t on grade level for math . . . Are you out of your mind?” Asher said at a MONTH board meeting.
Asher later added: “We come to the board of education and hear nothing, not a g**damn thing about education and literacy and reading for our children. Stop it.”
St. Louis Public Schools were closed Monday due to weather. An email sent to Cousins was not immediately returned, nor was a phone message for a St. Louis law firm involved in the drafting of the school board’s no-trespass letter to Asher.