A federal appeals court has ruled that teachers’ Pride flags, the pro-LGBT messaging they demanded to use on their public school students, are not protected by the First Amendment.
“Plaintiffs-Appellants Christopher Dolce, Sarah Ecke, and Shinaide McAleavey-Polley allege that the Connetquot Central School District and its officials violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and Title VII when it ordered them to remove the pride flags and stickers that decorated the walls of their public high school classrooms,” said the opinion from the 2nd U.S Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Gonzalez, J.) dismissed their complaint for failure to state a claim, and the teachers appealed. Applying Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), we conclude that the teachers’ classroom wall decorations constituted speech pursuant to their official duties as Government employees. As a result, the District did not violate their First Amendment rights when it ordered the teachers to remove them.
“We also conclude that the teachers have not plausibly pled that the District selectively enforced its policies against them because of an impermissible motivation, or that they suffered any adverse employment actions.”
The Second Circuit rules that public school teachers have no First Amendment right to hang Pride flags in their classrooms. 🙌
The opinion was authored by a lesbian Biden appointee. Refreshing to see a youngish judge who isn’t entirely beholden to ideology and identity! pic.twitter.com/3LDRXYppTi
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) September 2, 2026
Then a commentary at Twitchy revealed the surprise: The ruling was from “a Biden appointee who is a lesbian. That’s refreshing common sense.”
This surprise comes in an age when judges appointed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden routinely rule against President Donald Trump no matter the issue, the question or the legal dispute. One Washington-based leftist judge even has defied the U.S. Supreme Court in ruling politically against Trump.
The decision said, “Under Garcetti v. Ceballos … and its progeny, when public employees’ speech ‘owes its existence’ to their ‘professional responsibilities,’ the government – their employer – can control the content of that speech without implicating their Frist Amendment rights. The question in his case is whether that same principle applies to displays hung on the walls of a public high school teacher’s match classroom. We hold that it does.”
Wow!
We’re taking back America one classroom at a time. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/fzoJ489W6y
— Shannon Adcock 🇺🇸 (@Shannon_A_IL) September 2, 2026
The opinion explained, “Christopher Dolce, Sarah Ecke, and Shinaide McAleavey Polley are teachers at Connetquot Central High School and ‘open members of the LGBTQ+ community.’ App’x 24. In 2022, Connetquot Central School District officials ordered Ecke to take down two pride flags that hung on the walls of her math classroom. They also told Dolce and McAleavey-Polley that they could not place pride flag stickers on their classroom doors. In response, Ecke, Dolce, and McAleavey-Polley sued the District, the Board of Education, and various District officials under Section 1983, Title VII, Title IX, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the Suffolk County Human Rights Law. The district court dismissed the teachers’ complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). On appeal, the teachers contend that it should not have. Specifically, they claim that when the District ordered them to take down their flags and stickers but did not require the same of others, it violated their First Amendment rights, denied them equal protection of the laws, and discriminated against them because of sex and sexual orientation.”
The ruling said, “We disagree.”
When the teachers demanded permission to promote the Pride emblem, warning school officials that restricting that activity “would harm both the students and school district,” school officials explained the district policy barred “political practices” in classrooms and allowed only two flags, the American flag and the New York state flag.
