Free Speech Rights in Private Schools
What about private school? Hi, I’m Oklahoma fathers’ rights lawyer Brian L. Jackson with Dads.Law. Let’s talk about does your child have a free speech right in private school? A starting point to the issue of any private entity and private schools are no exception to this.
As a general rule, constitutions prohibitions under the Bill of Rights are incorporated against the federal government and the states, not private entities, not private citizens. Which means that as a general rule, your child’s rights in that school are going to be more subject to private contract law than constitutional law.
What do I mean by that? When you get into a private school, you’re basically talking about a business transaction. Now when you typically, private schools, as a personal matter, my daughter attends private school and when my wife and I signed her up for private school, they gave us a fairly lengthy contract we were required to review and sign off on. It included a number of specific policies of the school. Some of which incidentally would not be constitutional if a public school was attempting to interpose the same restrictions. But it’s not a public school, it’s a private school. And as a condition of attendance, they can require you to submit to certain restrictions that would not apply if you were talking about a public school because they’re private and the federal constitution doesn’t apply.
That doesn’t mean though that your student doesn’t have rights in that school. As far as free speech goes, their rights are usually going to be constrained by whatever the terms of enrollment are. If there’s a student handbook, that’s typically going to be incorporated into the contract that controls their enrollment. And their rights, whatever they may be, are going to be controlled by that contract.
Consulting a Lawyer for Disputes
So if you ever have a dispute with a private school, really it’s a good idea to be familiar with the student handbook and familiar with the contract you signed. And if you have questions about that, again, I would give the same advice I would give to any parent of a public school student.
If you get into a dispute with a school over like a free speech issue, like for example, a patch on the child’s backpack or an armband or anything like that, it would be in your best interests as a starting point to go talk to a good lawyer who is familiar with contract law. Now there are some federal statutory laws that do apply to all educational institutions, for example, FERPA. But FERPA doesn’t really, it wouldn’t necessarily be much help to you in the context of a dispute with a private school over speech. And again, a good starting point is to consult with a good lawyer who’s familiar with that area of law.
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