A court of appeals in the United States revived the claim of a middle school teacher in Washington after a principal threatened to discipline him if he continued to wear a “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hat to training sessions.
On Thursday, the court released its decision on the claim filed by the teacher against the principal whom he claimed violated his free-speech rights.
According to the reports, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that there was no evidence supporting the claim of the principal, alleging that teacher Eric Dodge had caused any actual disruption by wearing the hat that expresses support for former US President Donald Trump during the teacher-only training sessions at his Vancouver, Washington, school.
Dodge accused principal Caroline Garrett of calling him homophobic and racist because he was wearing the red baseball cap with white lettering that became a ubiquitous and divisive symbol of Trump’s 2016 campaign and his presidency.
The teacher also alleged that Garrett told him that he would need a union representative if he wore the same hat to school again.
However, during the trial, the 9th circuit ruled that wearing a MAGA hat was indeed a speech protected by the U.S. Constitution. The court also claimed that evidence of some faculty members being offended if they said that was not sufficient to override Dodge’s free-speech rights.
However, the panel claimed that Dodge could not file a lawsuit against the Evergreen School District for the dismissal of the harassment complaint that he previously filed against Garrett and the human resource official who initially investigated the incident.
Following the decision, Michael McFarland, a counsel for the school district and the HR official released a statement, claiming that they were pleased with the decision.
However, Dodge’s counsel refused to comment. Garrett’s lawyer also did not respond to a request to release a statement.
In a statement released by Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest, he argued “that some may not like the political message being conveyed is par for the course and cannot itself be a basis for finding disruption of a kind that outweighs the speaker’s First Amendment rights.”
