San Leandro Teachers Association and California Teachers Association v. Governing Board of the San Leandro Unified School District, San Leandro Unified School District, Christine Lim and Mike Hernandez

On May 16, 2008, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California drafted and submitted an amicus brief in San Leandro Teachers Association v. San Leandro USD with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties. The question presented in the case was whether a school district employer could censor political messages–concerning the local school board election—in a teachers’ union’s newsletter distributed through school district employee mailboxes. Our amicus brief in support of the teachers’ association argued that the California Supreme Court should follow its tradition of providing broader speech protection than the U.S. Constitution and, in particular, that it should apply a “functional compatibility” test, rather than the federal “public forum” analysis. Under a functional compatibility test, the teacher’s union’s use of the mailboxes would be protected because the newsletters and their political content would not be incompatible with the District’s own use of employee mailboxes.

On June 18, 2009, the California Supreme court upheld the school district’s prohibition of the use of employee mailboxes for the endorsement of school board candidates. The Court’s opinion was narrow and did not reach the question of whether the California Constitution’s Liberty of Speech Clause should be governed by the federal forum analysis under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.