California&#39;s Leonard Law - to what extent does it apply at religious schools Here's the full reference in the California legal code. The main section: (a) A school district operating one or more high schools, a charter school, or a private secondary school shall not make or enforce a rule subjecting a high school pupil to disciplinary sanctions solely on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside of the campus, is protected from governmental restriction by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or Section 2 of Article I of the California Constitution. There's a clause related to religious schools: (c) This section does not apply to a private secondary school that is controlled by a religious organization, to the extent that the application of this section would not be consistent with the religious tenets of the organization. In my layperson research most references I found blanket discount the entire section because of clause '(c)', saying the entire section (known as Leonard Law) doesn't apply to religious schools. To me that doesn't seem correct. Yes, at a catholic school students couldn't hold a "pro-abortion" rally on campus because abortion is inconsistent with a tenent of the church. On the other hand, a rally in support of a teacher or student that was just dismissed (or expelled)... there's nothing there that goes against the tenents of the religion.
Clause (c) says that while schools cannot generally restrict otherwise legal expressions by students, a school run by a religious organization can restrict such speech in terms of its tenets. It then becomes a matter of fact to be proven in court that the church has a particular tenet. So if you are asking whether it is correct that the religion exception is narrowly limited to contradictions of the religion's tenets, that is correct.
Merely encouraging people not to vaccinate via educational and political communication without purporting to provide individualized medical advice is probably not the practice of medicine and protected by the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech, rather than constituting medical malpractice. Also, many anti-vax individuals (I couldn't quote a percentage) do so out of religious conviction and are protected not just by the freedom of speech in the First Amendment, but also by the free exercise component of the freedom of religion under the First Amendment. Generally speaking, it is harder to find a legal grounds for disregarding the free exercise of religion than it is to find a legal basis to regulate otherwise free speech. For example, commercial speech is subject to more rigorous regulation than private political and educational speech, which is why there are no private businesses taking anti-vax positions in their advertising. The theory is that courts are not in a good position to make general determinations of the truth of policy positions or statements about general truths as opposed to what happened in a particular transaction or occurrence. This is in part because a ruling by the right court at the right time can preclude the correctness of its determination from being revisited indefinitely and from time to time, accepted conventional wisdom and scientific consensus at one time are revealed later on to have been wrong with more discussion and investigation. I think that this is unlikely to be the case in the vaccination area, but the whole point of the First Amendment's protection of these kinds of issues is that we can't know in advance what will continue to be widely accepted and what will turn out to be mistaken. But, if someone in a medical diagnosis and treatment profession (e.g. M.D., D.O., physician's assistant, or nurse), were to advise a patient in a capacity as a medical care provider not to vaccinate, and as a result that person's child got sick from a disease that vaccination could have prevented, there probably would be medical malpractice liability. A somewhat similar issue arises when health insurance companies or government agencies set rules on providing care. In those cases, it isn't uncommon to have a physician or other medical professional placed on a committee or in an office such as medical director, with that person making the call and exposed to liability although not in the same way as a treating medical professional. A case about a month ago found malpractice by an insurance company's medical director (the company was United Health) to be a huge liability for both the medical director and the insurance company.
I'll start with a list of issues presented and also note at the outset that the question correctly notes that both the school district (which is an entity distinct from the county), and the superintendent of schools, are protected from civil liability to a significant extent by the doctrine of sovereign immunity which is outlined here. Two specific provisions bear particular note: an exclusion of liability for someone who has reported a suspected child abuse case, and immunity for a school teacher who acts in good faith with regard to supervision, care and discipline of students. 1. What duty does a public school board in the U.S., or do specific employees of that school board, have to prevent a violent crime from being committed by one student against another student, when that student has no prior history of serious misconduct? Short of malice directed at a victimized student there is no liability under state law. There is also no well established constitutional right violated that could give rise to civil rights liability. Students commit crimes against each other all of the time and school officials are almost never responsible for those crimes. 2. What duty does a public school board in the U.S., or do specific employees of that school board, have to prevent a violent crime from being committed by one student against another student, when that student has a history of prior serious misconduct? The legal standard is the same but the practical analysis might be more fact intensive. Still, outright malice directed towards a victim would pretty much be the applicable legal standard and is unlikely to be present in this case, absent awareness, for example, of conditions of probation or pre-trial release after the first case that weren't enforced. 3. Is a public school in the U.S. permitted or required by law to advise parents of students at the school that student transferring into the new school has a history of violent criminal conduct? Juvenile justice law and educational privacy laws profoundly limit the extent to which a public school, or its officials are allowed to disclose that a student transferring into a school has a history of violent criminal conduct. There is no clear duty of the public school in the U.S. to disclose this fact broadly. 4. Is a statement by a superintendent to parents in a public school district that transgender girl does not pose a threat to cis-gender girls in restrooms an actionable fraud (and does it matter if there is a history of prior misconduct by a particular student in this case of which the superintendent was aware)? The statement is not, in general, false. If it was made after knowledge of this particular student, that might be a different matter, but as noted above, there are severe legal limitations on what the board is allowed to say. It isn't inconceivable that the school board or superintendent could have said more than it did to at least some people. But there isn't a clear legal duty to do so. It also isn't clear what the superintendent actually knew when he made a report to the school board even tough the information should have been shared with him. It is possible that only a lower level official in the school system had actual knowledge at that time. 5. What crime, if any, did the father of the first rape victim commit for trying to warn the parents about someone who attacked his daughter? This is partially speculation, but the father appears to have been arrested for the manner in which he acted disturbing the peace, speaking out of turn, and refusing the leave a meeting when requested, rather than sharing the information per se. 6. Did the school superintendent commit a crime somehow connected to the second rape by concealing the risk posed by the student in question? The school superintendent has a duty to report child abuse to authorities and failure to do so (if it was not done) would be minor crime. My impression of the fact is that the first rape was reported to juvenile justice system officials and resulted in action being taken. So, it does not appear that this duty was breached. According to the article: The boy was arrested and charged for the first assault in July but released from juvenile detention while prosecutors waited for DNA rape kit evidence to come back. Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Buta Biberaj says at the time they had no reason to believe the boy should have stayed in juvenile detention. “If that case had gone forward and we were not able to substantiate beyond a reasonable doubt the allegations that were made by the victim, he would've been out anyway,” she said. “The best decision was made with the facts that were known.&quot; This does not, however, give him criminal liability for a subsequent rape of one student by another in which he had not involvement sufficient to constitute criminal conspiracy to commit sexual assault which was the case here. 7. Does the school board have defamation liability for calling the father of the victim of the first rape a transphobe? No. The school board has sovereign immunity from suits for money damages seeking to establish liability in relation to statements made in their official capacity, apparently in good faith. It also isn't clear that the statements made were actionable in the first place, or that such statements were even made by them. The school board also does not appear to have had actual knowledge of what happened until a decisive school board meeting after the second assault. 8. Does the public have any power to remove an appointed official such as the superintendent in this context? No. The political remedy is to elect a new school board that would select a different superintendent.
That statute, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in US v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310, does not define desecration. Case law on point is not forthcoming since there is no enforceable law on the topic and as long as the First Amendment holds, we can't test laws prohibiting flag desecration. The general meaning of the word is to treat disrespectfully, irreverently, or profanely, and that clearly is not the case in the present usage. A different statute yet to be written might outlaw "any modifications of the flag" (and would suffer the same fate as 18 USC 700), which could be technically violated in the application of a thin blue line to a flag.
The key limiting factors are the language: and the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating B’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B. And, also, the context of the term "belief" in the statute in conjunction with religion which is defined in the same section, which suggests that in this context it is intended to be understood as the kind of belief that constitutes a core worldview for a person, even if it is secular (e.g. Confucianism or a Stoic philosophy of life), rather than isolated particular ideas about factual things. There is also considerable room for judicial interpretation over whether, for example "effect of" is limited to an "effect" reasonably derived from the "conduct" in question. Still, in general, the U.K., has higher standards mandating civility in dealings with others than the U.S., and there is lots of conduct barred by the Equality Act of 2010 which would not be barred under U.S. law, for example. The closest analog in U.S. law is really the tort of "outrageous conduct" also sometimes known as "intentional infliction of emotional distress."
The question didn't mention marital status, but since states formally recognize that relationship it's helpful to start there. tl;dr: The Supreme Court decided state laws that required a woman to notify her spouse were unconstitutional. Thus it's unlikely there'd be grounds for suit. Background The central mechanism of Roe v. Wade (U.S. 1973) was a balancing act between what it decided was a 14th amendment right to privacy and the state's interest in both the health of the woman and the potentiality of life. Because Roe explicitly recognized a state interest, Pennsylvania passed a statute in 1982 that required informed consent and a 24-hour waiting period. It also mandated parental consent for minors (with some exceptions) and spousal notification. This reached the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood of SE Penn. v. Casey (U.S. 1992). There, the court upheld most of the Pennsylvania law (reinforcing its statement in Roe that a state does have an interest) but struck down the spousal notification portion. To do that, it determined the appropriate test was whether a state was placing an undue burden---a significant obstacle---in the path of a woman seeking an abortion prior to fetal viability. It reasoned that: state regulation impacts a female's liberty more than male's during pregnancy (by way of biology) if a man and woman disagree, only one can prevail not all women are equally impacted by a notification mandate (for reasons of domestic violence, etc.) Combining this with the notion that women do not lose any constitutionally protected liberty upon marriage, it decided spousal notification would be a significant obstacle and thus an undue burden. In other words, unmarried women don't have spouses to notify, so placing a notification requirement on married women creates an additional burden that the court found undue. To get back to the question, the father certainly has a right to file a suit against the female (...and it happens from time to time). However, it likely wouldn't go far. Since unmarried women were the baseline in Casey, it's unlikely there'd be grounds for either married or unmarried fathers to sue their female partners. This comes up frequently under the moniker of "Father's Rights," which has gained less traction in the U.S. than in other countries. That said, Wisconsin recently introduced a bill that would allow fathers to proceed against abortion providers.
You say: the school expects him to create a public Twitter account, with his real information, in order to promote the program &amp; the results of the program. This is a cut-and-dried case of compelled speech. Your son is being required to say certain things in public in order to pass this course. The Supreme Court has decided that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate". This is subject to the legitimate interests of the school, but it is hard to see how compelled speech on Twitter can be defended as a legitimate interest. You also say this is to "promote the program and the results of the program". It sounds like the students are being required to say certain things about the course. If your son were to create the account and then post only material critical of the school, such as complaints about compelled speech, would that result in a passing grade? It sounds like it might be an issue. Compelled speech at school was considered by the Supreme Court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which is the case about students being required to salute the flag. They found that requiring students to salute the flag was unconstitutional. Public education, according to the Court, should “not strangle the free mind at its source [or] teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” Instead, education should enable students to make informed choices about what to believe. From the judgement itself: the refusal of these persons to participate in the ceremony does not interfere with or deny rights of others to do so. Nor is there any question in this case that their behavior is peaceable and orderly. The sole conflict is between authority and rights of the individual. That is very much the case here. Your son's refusal to make the required public speech is not causing any difficulty for the school authorities. In conclusion, your son has made a decision not to create a Twitter account under his own name and say certain things within that account. This is entirely his constitutional right. You might consider contacting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who have a history of engaging in cases like this. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) might also be interested. Edit: Zack Lipton in comments below makes the point that much student work can be considered a kind of compelled speech (e.g. "Write an essay on Hamlet" or "Submit an entry to this poetry competition") and asks how this is different. Its a good question, and I have to say it does suggest that there is a difference of degree rather than kind. However I would argue that posting to an international forum widely used by adults is a different matter to a school assembly, or even a national essay competition. It would also depend a great deal on what has to be posted to get a passing grade.
First, the relevant term is "precedent". You have misstated the nature of "precedent". Precedent is simply the addition of further information about what the law is. A legislature may set forth a law that say "If A, then (if you B, you will suffer consequence C)". But it is not self-evident in a given instance whether A is true, or B is true, or what exactly C refers to. In addition, law is an integrated system, so Law #39 may seem to contradict Law #12: does that mean that Law #39 doesn't apply, or is it that Law #12 (if #12 is a Constitutional provision, #39 is just wrong – laws exist in a hierarchy). Therefore, laws must be interpreted. "Precedent" refers to the creation of a rule of interpretation, one which is logically consistent with existing rules of interpretation (which are arranged in some logical hierarchy). If the Supreme Court establishes a rule that laws penalizing "hate speech" contradict the First Amendment (R.A.V v. St Paul) and therefore cannot be a law in the US, then any similar law is, by rule, also not actually a law. Creation of precedent itself follows rules, though ones that are harder to discern – this is what "jurisprudence" is about. For example, some justices believe that they should appeal to an inherent feeling of justice; others believe that a law should be interpreted according to perceived legislative intent; still others focus on the wording of the legal text (statute, usually). This does not involve appeal to popular sentiment. It does mean (usually) that law is seen to be a system of rules, and not case-by-case feelings.