The Pennsbury School District agrees to $300,000 settlement of lawsuit over four men’s curtailed public comments

The Pennsbury School District has agreed to a $300,000 settlement of a lawsuit by four men whose public comments were curtailed.

The agreement, approved by the school board Thursday night, follows a federal judge’s order in November that directed the Bucks County district to stop enforcing its policy prohibiting abusive, offensive, or personally directed public comments — deeming it a likely violation of the First Amendment.

“School boards across the country should take note. Rules for public comments must respect the First Amendment rights of speakers. If you are limiting which opinions may be shared, you’ll be held liable for violating First Amendment rights,” said Alan Gura, vice president for litigation at the Institute for Free Speech, a Washington-based nonprofit that represented residents Douglas Marshall, Simon Campbell, Robert Abrams, and Tim Daly in a lawsuit.

Under the agreement, the district’s insurance carrier will pay $300,000 in attorneys’ fees, as well as $17.91 to each of the men — a “symbolic payment” referring to 1791, the year the First Amendment was ratified, the institute said.

» READ MORE: Pennsbury school board now can’t stop public comments it deems offensive. What does it mean for other districts?

The board approved the agreement without any discussion Thursday.

“All of the named parties agree the matter is best resolved by mutual agreement,” board president TR Kannan said in a statement. “Pennsbury’s No. 1 focus has been, and will always be, the students of our district. The Pennsbury community is better for the actions we have taken today.”

The men, who sued the district and school board in October, argued they had been illegally censored by the district, including while questioning its equity initiatives — a heated topic last year in a number of communities around the region, as angry parents turned out at school board meetings.

During a school board meeting last March, Marshall spoke about his view of the history of racial problems in the country while objecting to the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The board later cut his remarks from a video recording of the meeting — stating “the comments escalated from expressing a viewpoint to expressing beliefs and ideas that were abusive and coded in racist terms, also known as ‘dog whistles.’ ”

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Two months later, following a presentation on the district’s equity efforts, Daly, Marshall, and Abrams were all cut off while making separate comments. The district’s assistant solicitor, who dismissed their remarks as misrepresentative of the district’s equity program and irrelevant, shouted at each man: “You’re done!”

And the month after that — in an episode that went viral online — Campbell, a former Pennsbury school board member, castigated the board as “snowflakes” and referred to its then-president as “School Board President Benito Mussolini.” The district’s solicitor interrupted Campbell to warn he would be “asked to step away” if he made more personally directed comments. (The board’s president later said she received death and rape threats as Campbell’s speech garnered national attention.)

In her November order, U.S. District Court Judge Gene Pratter said that while she was not addressing whether the men’s speech was offensive, “suffice it to say that the First Amendment protects offensive speakers.” The district’s conduct, she said, amounted to “impermissible viewpoint discrimination.”

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The policy Pennsbury invoked in cutting off the comments was based on a model policy written by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association that many area school boards had adopted, and that some district lawyers recommended they suspend. The association said it was reviewing its policy in the wake of Pratter’s order.

Pennsbury, meanwhile, has rewritten its public comment policy and cut ties with its former solicitor, according to the Institute for Free Speech, which is also representing members of the Moms for Liberty group in a case against the public schools in Brevard County, Fla.

The institute will receive $237,590 under the Pennsbury settlement, while a Norristown-based firm also representing the men, Vangrossi & Rechuitti, will receive $62,410, according to the agreement.