Even as the Missouri Senate is working on a "fix" for the Facebook portion of Sen. Jane Cunningham's Amy Hestir Davis Student Protection Act, another challenge to the law continues to wind its way through federal court.
In documents filed over the last few days in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Ladue teacher Christina Thomas, asks for an injunction against the act, while the defendants in the lawsuit, the Ladue School Board and the Missouri State Board of Education, have asked both for a delay in the hearing, due to the Senate actions and the case's outright dismissal.
The lawsuit was filed after school officials told Christina Thomas she could not communicate with her own child through social networking sites.
According to the petition, "Ladue School District has notified its teachers that they cannot have exclusive communications with their own children on Facebook, if they meet the statutory definition of student or former student. Specifically, Plaintiff and other teachers at Ladue School District were notified in writing that because of the statute they will be prohibited from communicating exclusively through Facebook or other social-networking sites with their own children or members of their Sunday School classes, athletic teams, or scout troops “unless or until exceptions are enacted[,]” if the children are students or former students as defined by the statute."
The lawsuit says that SB 54 is "a prior restraint on speech in that it requires promulgation and enforcement of a policy that restricts the speech of Plaintiff and members of the Plaintiff Class before the speech occurs."
The petition asks the judge to certify the lawsuit as a class action suit in which all Missouri school teachers would be members of the class and asks for preliminary and permanent injunctions against enforcement of the law.
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