First Amendment experts, radical feminists and doctors are pushing back against a court ruling that held two educators responsible for their own firing because their opposition to a proposed gender identity policy sparked student protests and community complaints to Oregon's Grants Pass School District.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke botched Supreme Court precedents on the speech rights of public employees and qualified immunity from personal liability, upheld restrictions that disproportionately target women and adopted pseudoscientific language, according to ideologically diverse friend-of-the-court briefs filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Clarke's dismissal of the educators' lawsuit "effectively endorses a heckler’s veto" by holding Rachel Sager and Katie Medart responsible for "community backlash" to their speech as private citizens, according to the brief by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
