- If there's anything
the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed,
it's that a crisis can bring out the very best
and the very worst in people.
For instance, as New York City prepared itself
for the worst in early 2020, Samaritan's Purse dispatched
an army of Christian medical professionals and volunteers
to set up an emergency field hospital in Central Park,
all at no cost to the city.
Yet because Samaritan's Purse holds Christian beliefs,
some city council members demanded
that the charity pull up stakes and leave.
Like we said, the best and the worst.
Likewise, in Washington, D.C.,
shortly after officials allowed "Black Lives Matter"
and "Defund the Police" to be painted on streets,
two pro-life advocates from a small group
affiliated with Students for Life of America
and the Frederick Douglass Foundation
were arrested for writing "Black Pre-Born Lives Matter"
in temporary chalk on the same streets,
even though they had requested
a permit from the city in advance.
The message was simple: you're free to express yourself
and gather in large crowds with people who agree with you,
but not if you disagree
with the government's preferred message.
But it's not just in big cities like New York and Washington
that we've seen this dynamic play out.
It's happening all over the country,
including small towns like Pinola, Mississippi,
population 1,543.
That's where school officials
barred third-grader Lydia Booth
from expressing her deeply-held religious beliefs
on her school-mandated mask, even though her classmates
could express their non-religious views.
Ever since school had opened back up
for in-person classes in the early fall,
students throughout Simpson County had shown up
wearing masks bearing all kinds of messages.
Some of Lydia's classmates wore masks
that said "Black Lives Matter."
Others wore masks supporting the logos
of local football, basketball, or baseball teams.
But only Lydia Booth wore a mask that,
in administrators' minds, crossed the line.
What was this offending message?
Three words: "Jesus Loves Me."
Pretty offensive, huh?
At least that's what the grownups
running Lydia's taxpayer-funded public school
must have thought.
And that's why school officials
pulled the nine-year-old aside
and forced her to take off her mask
and swap it out for a different one.
Despite their claims to the contrary,
administrators were discriminating against Lydia,
and her parents weren't about to stand by
and allow their daughter to be silenced.
Students at a public school
don't need a permission slip to speak freely on campus.
The First Amendment guarantees that right.
So, Lydia's mom, Jennifer,
researched the school's policy on masks,
only to find that there was no rule
about what messages were allowed.
Along with posting on social media
about the treatment her daughter faced at school that day,
Jennifer set up a meeting with school administrators.
In response, school officials scrambled to produce
a new policy banning messages on face masks
to try and escape the consequences of their own censorship.
Yet the backpedaling rule only made things worse,
explicitly banning all messages on masks
that are political, religious, or that may be offensive.
As it turns out, unconstitutionally banning more speech
isn't the cure for an unconstitutional ban on some speech.
Remember that first lesson from kindergarten?
Two wrongs don't make a right.
In response to the school district's actions
and to make sure this doesn't happen at other schools,
Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit.
This isn't just about a mask.
It's about a public school picking and choosing
which viewpoints are welcome at school.
When it comes to free speech,
the government can't pick winners and losers
depending on what people have to say.
That applies at public schools
every bit as it does on public street corners.
As a society, we've debated many things
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But one thing that's not debatable
is whether students have the right to free speech at school.
The First Amendment settled this question
over 200 years ago.
Free speech isn't optional,
tt's mandatory.