Are American &quot;no promo homo&quot; laws enforced? Seven US states have laws that limit the discussion of homosexuality in public schools. Two other states previously had such laws. How frequently, if at all, are these laws enforced or have previously been enforced, whether by forcing changes in schools or by punishing violators? I'm skeptical the laws are ever enforced because (a) I can't readily find news reports of anybody being prosecuted, and (b) several of the laws require teachers to tell students that gay sex is illegal, although it is actually legal throughout the US since Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
School districts / states do generally have the power to set the curriculum including the viewpoint that will be officially conveyed. One well-known major restriction on such viewpoint restrictions is that the schools cannot restrict the free exercise of a religion, and cannot take a position on a religion. Apart from the religion third-rail, schools have pretty free reign in setting the curriculum, see Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City for one instantiation. In this case, the teacher assigned various books, including Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the books that prompted an outcry. The upshot of that case is that a teacher cannot invoke the First Amendment to override policy. This article (draft version, easier to handle) (published version, annoying footnote structure) reviews the topic, and section III covers prior cases. It notes that the cases of Lawrence, Windsor, Obergefell do not address the constitutionality of these education laws, though the reasoning in the prior cases might be applicable if there were a suit over curriculum. There is an implication that some of these rules have been enforced in the past, but most of the evidence is in the form of news stories (Beall v. London City School BOE is not available in the open). The article does engage in a somewhat deeper study of enforcement in Utah, where it was enforced (until it was repealed). Enforcement is necessarily indirect. The law require school districts to have a particular curriculum; violation would come when an individual teacher taught contrary to the prescribed curriculum. Those laws do not contain any provision like "a teacher who violates these rules gets fired", instead, punishment is via the general rule that you have to teach what is in the state-mandated curriculum. Rather than officially terminating a teacher for violating this curricular guideline, districts use vague reasons for non-renewal such as "due to problems with communication and teamwork" (from Evans-Marshall).
There is no such law in the US, although there many laws prohibiting specific forms of harm, for example laws against murder, theft, assault, arson. All laws are predicated on the idea that an illegal act causes harm, but I don't get to deem, for example, that you are harming society by opposing Satan. There are no laws prohibiting any belief in the US, and such a law would be unconstitutional (in violation of the First Amendment). So being a Satanist could not possibly be illegal.
Yes, there is legal precedent against this that would only apply to a government employee. First, let's discuss the private sector. In this case, you are a private employee that comes to your place of work and accuses you of "stealing the cookies from the cookie jar" which is a serious criminal offense. They wish to talk and your boss is in the room. You plead the 5th, but your boss says you're fired if you don't talk to the cops. This is legal because you still have the right to refuse to talk, you just lose your job. A private employer has the right to free association, and wants nothing to do with cookie thieves, alleged or actual. However, in the government employ, your boss is an agent of the government. This same situation is different because the government pays the boss and the agent... so in essence the government is saying talk or be fired. This is unconstitutional as the government cannot retalitate against you for your refusal to talk. Generally, in order to talk to you, the investigator would need either a signed Garrity Statement or a Signed Kalkines Statement. The former is a statement saying that they are investigating a wrong doing but you cannot lose your job if you refuse to speak to the investigators, where as Kalkines says you must talk but you are granted immunity for your part in the wrong doing, so long as you make truthful statements. For more on this, check this legal blog. There is also the matter that a false accusation (and let me be clear... this is academic, I'm not saying the accusation in the real life topic is false, nor am I saying that the defense is false... we're merely discussing a possibility) is made to your employer and they do not offer the job on the basis of the accusation alone, this is grounds for defamation actions... and in certain jurisdictions, it's criminal defamation, so there could be jail time. It's interesting you mentioned teachers, because this happens alot. Kids do know that there are certain things that get a teacher fired quickly, so teachers do get the occasional false accusation of sexual assault (I know one teacher who has had multiple accusations over the course of her career). One of the few good things I can say about the Teachers Union is they cover the legal defense of accused teachers. The accusations do get the teacher removed from the class for sometime, but they don't lose their jobs over this matter. It's followed up but the accusation doesn't immediately lead to the teacher getting fired..
Anyone has a right to report illegal activities that it is aware of to the authorities. This is in fact where 99.9% of police investigations start. In addition, students of a school (or, more generally, members of any organisation) are eligible to be investigated/disciplined by the school in accordance with the rules of the school providing that the investigation and punishment are in accordance with the law. This would normally permit (require?) notification of any child's parent or guardian. In loco parentis does not arise - the school is acting as a responsible citizen; not as a substitute for the children's parents.
First of all, even if it is not allowed to test them, you can also refuse to service someone untested - and that is not illegal discrimination, as &quot;untested for COVID 19&quot; is not a protected class. Public Schools however are not companies in the normal way, and the CDC can only advise in the rulemaking of local legislators and executives. And in the current health crisis, the school board and health authorities can order things for the protection of others and this can be enough justification to exclude individuals or several people from groups. After all, being teste or not is clearly not a protected class under the Civil Rights Act, and neither is easily regarded as a form of first amendment speech - unlike a black armband (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community). Being untested is much more akin to being a person on a ship and then attempting to disembark in a quarantine zone - which was decided in Compagnie Francaise &amp; Lousiana Board of Health (there are two of those btw). The majority opinion in the SCOTUS case (1902) writes (emphasis mine): 24 True it is that, in some of the cases relied on in the argument, it was held that a state law absolutely prohibiting the introduction, under all circumstances, of objects actually affected with [a contagious] disease, was valid because such objects were not legitimate commerce. But this implies no limitation on the power to regulate by health laws the subjects of legitimate commerce. 34 [A]ssuming that all the treaties relied on are applicable, we think it clearly results from their context that they were not intended to, and did not, deprive the government of the United States of those powers necessarily inhering in it and essential to the health and safety of its people. Using a similar vein as in Compagnie Francaise, the public health interest might be enough for even a public school to only allow presence in the building with a test and otherwise demand online or remote learning (which isn't always an option) or even just suspend people that are not tested until such a time their presence is deemed safe. A private school is vastly more free in rulemaking, and as even a public school can muster strict scrutiny regarding presence teaching, a private school surely will get away with it. But nothing can force a private school to suspend teaching, switching to online classes or demand to test, unless they like to or their accreditation hinges on it - and here religious schools come in: There are religious groups that to an extent of not allowing medical procedures on their members, including COVID-testing. Those schools could ban people from attending that are tested. Endnote Public Health Interest is a hammer that can be rather heavy. It can't be used to discriminate against HIV, as that doesn't spread from touch and sneeze, but it can be used to ban people from buildings that have Communicable Diseases. While nobody classed COVID 19 as such yet, having such an illness [Plague, Cholera, Botulism, and others] allows the government to isolate you under strict scrutiny or even has been used to quarantine whole areas in the past (see the Compagnie Francaise case). And as you see in the current pandemic, legislative bodies globally do dish out rules for schools and public places in short order, some of which include testing strategies, and ways to overwrite consent via a state order. Some are struck down: some of them on procedural grounds (e.g. wrong body), others on grounds of equality (e.g. religious bias).
What discrimination? As explained in Conflict between a religious belief that accounts for the existence of transgender people vs. one that doesn&#39;t the Constitutional protection of the Free Exercise Clause applies to the exercise of a deeply held belief (religious or not). So, let's accept that a person believes that certain sexual practices or gender identity is morally repugnant for whatever reason and that belief triggers the Constitutional protections. That means, that the person cannot be forced to engage in those sexual practices or adopt a different gender identity. It does not mean that they have a licence to discriminate against people who do in a work or public environment - they can, of course, choose to avoid such people in their private life. Alternatively, if the person believes that they are required by their faith to discriminate on the basis of those characteristics then such a belief does not get Constitutional protection as it is now affecting the rights of others. In the same way that someone who believed in human sacrifice would not get Constitutional protection.
States have a general police power, meaning that they can pass laws about whatever they want unless there's a specific reason they can't. A state does not have to give special justification for why something is in the realm of stuff they can regulate; someone challenging it has to say what specific section of the Constitution it violates. For a time, the Due Process clause of the US Constitution was considered to imply freedom of contract. This time ended in the 1930s. The doctrine of a constitutionally protected freedom of contract is pretty much completely dead. A state can't abridge the freedom of contract for no reason, but that's because just about any law needs some reason to be allowed. The level of review is that the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest; this is not a very demanding level of review. Source State bar associations are given power by laws making it illegal to practice law without being a member of the bar and requiring licensed lawyers to comply with bar rules. State bars that control admission to practice are generally government agencies (specifically, agencies of the court system). When the state bar is not a government agency, attorney discipline and licensing is handled by a government agency (lawyers might have to join the bar, but the bar has to accept licensed lawyers as members; the bar's power in these cases is limited to recommendations to the courts).
Ignorantia juris non excusat You can say I didn't know: it won't keep you out of jail. Rather than delving into the specifics of your question, I will keep my answer general. If you break the law, you break the law. It doesn't matter if: you don't know what the law is, you didn't think the law applied to you, you thought what you were doing was in accordance with the law. "Break the law" is an objective fact - there is no subjectivity involved. The state of mind of the person is, in most jurisdictions, irrelevant; the common law doctrine of mens rea or "the guilty mind" has almost universally been done away with. Now specific offences have specific defences. Generally, in underage sex cases genuine ignorance of the age of the person is one such defence. A court may decide that ignorance that the person was underage under US law may qualify for this defence.