Criticizing the Coach Is OK But Must Board the Bus

It is protected speech for players to criticize their high school basketball coach but the players’ refusal to play in the game is not. However, whether the school can permanently ban the students from the team depends upon if the ban is based upon the students’ exercise of their free speech rights or their refusal to board the team bus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said.

The issue arose when an Oregon school district suspended most of a high school varsity basketball team after the players signed a petition calling for the team’s coach to be fired for allegedly abusing the players. When the school refused to immediately fire the coach, most of the varsity team refused to board the team bus for a game. Junior varsity players were used at the game instead.

The team presented the letter in private to the coach who took it to the school principal. Later in the day, the principal and the school’s athletic director met with all the players who signed the petition. The players told the principal that they would not play on the team that night if the coach remained. The principal replied that he could not remove the coach without an investigation. The players later refused to board the bus to the game. Unknown to the players, the coach had already stated to the principal that he would not coach that night. The players later stated that they would not have refused to travel with the team had they known the coach would not be coaching. All players who signed the petition were permanently suspended from the team.

The suspended players sued arguing that their First Amendment rights were violated and that the suspension was in retaliation for speaking out against the coach. The trial court granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of the school.

The appellate court said that the act of signing the petition was protected speech under the First Amendment. If the permanent suspensions were the result of the players signing the petition, then the case could proceed. However, if the suspensions were based solely upon the students’ failure to board the bus for the game, then the suspensions were proper.

The court discounted the players’ argument that the failure to board the bus was “expressive conduct encompassed by the First Amendment.” Rather, the court said, the players’ “boycott of the game substantially disrupted and materially interfered with a school activity.” A disruption of a school activity is not protected speech under the First Amendment and thus the school could punish the students for causing the disruption.

“School districts spend much time and money scheduling and hosting their extracurricular events, all of which involve the coordination of multiple school officials, students, parents and often times volunteers, referees or judges. When students decide not to participate in an extracurricular school activity on the day it is scheduled to take place-particularly one involving a competition against another school-their conduct will inevitably disrupt or interfere with the activity, because the school officials must either execute a contingency plan to see that the activity occurs or cancel it,” the court wrote.

The appellate court sent the case back to the trial court to determine if their petition and complaint about the coach “was a substantial or motivating factor in the defendants’ disciplinary action.” If so, then the suspensions were in retaliation to protected speech and were improper because they “would lead ordinary student athletes in the plaintiffs’ position to refrain from complaining about an abusive coach in order to remain on the team.”

Pinard et al. v. Clatskanie School District 6J et al., Ninth Circuit, No. 04-35574, May 1, 2006.