A regulation barring New York City teachers from wearing political campaign buttons in public high schools does not violate their constitutional right to free speech, a federal judge has ruled.
Rejecting the teachers’ argument that high school students would “spontaneously understand” that the buttons were not part of the curriculum, Southern District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan held that the plaintiffs had “offered no admissible evidence to undermine” the city’s argument that “displays of political partisanship by teachers in the schools” could “influence children and impinge on the rights of students to learn in an environment free of partisan political influence.”
