Supreme Court denies cert in valedictorian case

The district court had dismissed her case and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal. Now the Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal, leaving the lower court rulings in place. That means there were not 4 votes on the court to hear the appeal and that is the end of the case.

But as I wrote shortly after the incident took place, I think the school was wrong in its decision to censor her speech. Because this was a situation where the student had earned the spot to give the speech by objective criteria (being valedictorian) and did not have her speech chosen among others, the content of that speech was solely an expression of her views, not the school's views. Thus, there is no establishment clause problem, there is a free speech problem and the school has engaged in content-based censorship.

I wrote then, and still believe:

The valedictorian has earned, through their hard work, their opportunity to speak. Most of them will take that opportunity to review their time in school, talk about the future and their hopes for it, and to thank parents, teachers and others who have helped them achieve their goals. And in some cases, that student is going to strongly believe that their achievements were aided by God, and they have every right to say so because they are speaking for themselves, not for the school.

The folly of suggesting that her speech is the same as government speech should be shown merely be reference to the fact that the speaker one year may thank Jesus, the next year the speaker might thank Allah, and the next year the speaker might be an atheist who says, "We can achieve the most by not spending our time worrying about some mythical afterlife, but by focusing on how to make this world a better place." Surely the government isn't endorsing all three conflicting statements? Of course not. They are endorsing none of them, as each speech's content reflects the thoughts of the student, not school officials.

The irony here is that by demanding prior approval of the speech, the school is automatically forcing it to become government speech, or at least government-approved speech - and that's where the establishment clause problems comes in. Instead, they should not have any say over the content whatsoever if the speaker is picked by a neutral, objective standard.