Antisemitic speech and discriminatory language will soon be prohibited in Missouri public and charter schools.
Governor Mike Kehoe signed the legislation into law Thursday that would require school administrators to report antisemitic speech.
The First Amendment generally protects all kinds of speech, including hate speech. But if discriminatory or hate speech causes disruption in a classroom, schools can regulate it.
The Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines ruled in 1969 that students have the right to free expression unless it causes a substantial disruption to the learning environment of others.
Jared Schroeder, a journalism professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Missouri, questioned the purpose of this legislation. He said it just reinforces what the Supreme Court has already decided.
“I don't really know how you would interpret this law at this point,” Schroeder said. “If everybody's protected equally, then where are we where we weren't before we started? Did we start the car just idle in the driveway and just turn it off? Because we didn't really go anywhere.”
Currently, if a student in Missouri were to say something discriminatory toward any group of people, schools already have guidelines to manage the hateful language.
Noelle Gilzow is the Columbia Missouri National Education Association President and thinks this law is political.
“I find that there’s nothing wrong with the language that’s presented there, but it’s performative,” Gilzow said. “It’s not really needed because if such conduct were to occur, they already break existing policies.”
The new law will require school administrators to report instances of antisemitic and discriminatory language to a Title IX coordinator. Schools would also have to implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism into their code of conduct.
Gilzow said the law could be a burden for schools.
“It’s insisting upon a report if it’s ever brought up without conversing with the student first,” Gilzow said. “If that’s the case, then it is a burden on the teachers and administrators. If we can deal with it by talking to the student first and then hoping that takes care of it before elevating it, then I think that’s fair.”
Potential chilling effect
Schroeder said this law could scare schools into avoiding discussing sensitive topics, such as the Holocaust or Israeli politics, altogether.
“School districts might be more fearful that if they don't limit speech that falls under this definition that they would find themselves in trouble,” Schroeder said. “And so a lot of times, what happens when lawmakers try to limit certain types of distasteful speech, they end up limiting more speech than you would think, because people get afraid.”
If there is a chilling effect on sensitive topics, Gilzow thinks newer teachers would be the ones to be cautious with their lesson plans.
“I don’t think it would really change anything unless a newer teacher was worried that it would expand to discussions at all about the Holocaust or Israeli politics and the war,” Gilzow said.
Special protections
George Hruza, R-St. Louis, is the sponsor of the legislation. He said the goal of the law is to reduce the fear of antisemitism among Jewish students.
“Here we have Jewish students who have absolutely nothing to do with what is happening in Israel or Gaza are being targeted,” Hruza said.
But Gilzow said she hasn’t seen Jewish students being targeted in classrooms and that insensitive language is an issue across the board.
“There hasn’t been, to my knowledge, any targeting or specific behaviors against somebody of the Jewish faith,” Gilzow said.
Hruza’s bill originally only prohibited antisemitic speech, not discriminatory language, when it was passed in the House. The Senate expanded the protections from just antisemitism to include all discriminatory speech.
Schroeder added that this legislation gives special attention to antisemitism and singles out the Jewish faith while Missouri has enacted previous legislation to take away protections of marginalized groups.
“What's interesting is, over the last year or two, the federal government, and in Missouri, in some ways, has stripped away a lot of the efforts that passed have been made to protect certain classes of people who have traditionally been persecuted,” Schroeder said. “But this law says, ‘Wait, we've been stripping away all these protections for other persecuted groups, but this group, and only this group, gets special protection.’”
