Public Comment Policies & the First Amendment
Speaker: Maryam Judar
The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech has great significance for every
day citizens in students’ communities at school district board meetings and
city/ town/ village council meetings, to name a few venues. In fact, these
venues are thrilled to see students participate in their public comment portions
and eager to hear student viewpoints on issues of public concern identified by
students. While government bodies, including school district boards and city/
town/ village councils, have the authority to regulate their citizens’ speech,
they must craft their rules, regulations, policies, or laws with respect to
regulating the content of speech very carefully. Students’ communities have
seen an increase in the creation of public comment policies that attempt to
regulate the decorum of individual speakers during public comment portions of
government meetings. In this lesson, students critique real-life examples of
such public comment policies in assessing whether they violate or conform to
First Amendment law after learning about First Amendment principles of
vagueness, overbreadth, and prior restraints.
How does this program relate to the First Amendment?
Government regulations linked to the content of speech, such as the public
comment policies that are discussed in this lesson, are carefully scrutinized by
courts for their constitutionality. Our courts have repeated the admonition to
not “turn the First Amendment upside down” by restricting more speech than is
necessary, or “compelling,” to use a legal term of art. The kinds of
restrictions imposed by the public comment policies discussed in this lesson are
often vague and overbroad, in addition to causing a “chilling effect” on
speech—a hallmark of unconstitutional content-based speech regulation.
What will students learn from the program?
Students will learn the difference between content-based speech
regulation versus content-neutral speech regulation; the principles of
vagueness, overbreadth, and prior restraint; and the “chilling effect” of
content-based speech regulation.
In what ways is the program hands-on or interactive?
Students will break into groups and each will be assigned a different
public comment policy and critique them using the First Amendment principles
defined in the lesson.