Fired Over Johnny The Walrus?

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Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the Pray.com app today. As students go back to school, the issue of band books is once again in the headlines, while popstar Dua Lipa has recently launched her own band books display that includes some widely available books, one Oregon social worker found himself out of a job because

of his own book display, which included Matt Walsh's Johnny the Walrus. In this episode, we talk with Alliance Defending Freedom's Tyson Langhofer about the case of Rod Tyson, who found himself in hot water over three children's books that only encouraged children to accept how they were born. I'm daily wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell.

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Head to ZockDock.com/wire to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's zocdoc.com/wire. Joining us now to discuss the Oregon book banning cases, Tyson Langhoffer of Alliance Defending Freedom. Welcome on Tyson.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. So we've been covering the band of books debate as it's sort of flared up in the past. It goes away, it comes back. But now that the new school year has started, we're starting to see this become an issue again. We've seen some headlines recently about this.

We wanted to look at this really interesting case that actually relates directly to us here at the Daily Wire.

“What exactly is this case of this fired social worker about?”

Sure. Rod Tyson was an education specialist and a licensed clinical social worker for over 17 years at the Inter-Mountain Education Service District and he gave testing to students who were struggling and so forth and he had a great careers that his colleagues loved him. He loved his job, did a great job.

The issue arose when he decided to display three different books. He is he and she is she by Ryan and Bethany Bomber and then Johnny the Wallace by a guy you might be familiar with Matt Walsh. Hey, a photo of him. Yeah.

May I have heard of him? So Rod display in those books as decoration in his office all you could see was just the covers.

He never used them in his work, never used them with students and those messages are really

simple. Like boys, boys, girls or girls and they, every student should love how they were made.

“So how exactly did this turn into Rod getting into trouble?”

You know, he displayed the Johnny the Wallace book for more than two years, not a single complaint from a student, a parent, teacher, but after he began displaying the he is he and she she books a single teacher took offense to the covers of the books, did some research on what the book said and complained. The district unfortunately ran with that and they said that the books actually were a bias

incident, they label a bias incident, they said it was a hostile expression of animes to promote a binary view of gender. Now the problem with that is that the school, the school's own books like their science classes and their education classes, they promote an xx, xy vision of biology, they promote a biological use of pronouns.

So this wasn't about disruption or you know some variants from the curriculum, this was about shutting down a viewpoint that they don't like. And to be clear, other teachers were able to freely decorate their offices however they wanted correct. Absolutely.

It was very clear that every teacher employee has the right to decorate their classrooms and their offices, whatever way they want, they don't have to have prior permission. Many other teachers had, you know, BLM flags, had LGBT flags, they had pro union material,

books.

And many of those books weren't even age appropriate for the middle school level yet they

were allowed to continue to allow to display those books. So he's ordered to remove these books, he files a lawsuit, your team gets involved. And then there's apparently some sort of setup that triggered his firing, can you unpack that part for us? Sure, it's sort of a crazy set of facts.

So after the initial teacher complained, the school ordered him to remove the books. We then filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ron, and the district court actually ruled in Ron's favor and said that Ron could display the books when the students that he was serving were not present. So in other words, when he wasn't testing students in his office, he could display them,

he had to remove them while it was serving them. So beginning of the next school year, Ron puts the books back up. They're actually students, aren't even back in school yet, but the sixth grade students are visiting along with some eighth grade, eighth grade ambassadors. Four eighth graders show up in Rod's door, and they demand to read the books.

“Rod asks them, who are you, what are you doing, what are you supposed to be in class?”

They said, no, we're not in class, we just want to see these books. So they grabbed the books, they start reading them, and the teacher who had already filed two different complaints against Rod happens to walk by with a camera at the time and records these students reading the books. She then files a complaint the next day and the school uses that to terminate Ron's employment.

All right. So, clearly a set up by this teacher who's been targeting him from the beginning. This came to the ninth circuit just last month, as I understand it, what happened there? How did it rule? So in a two-to-one decision, that night circuit ruled in favor of the school, and they ruled essentially that because Rod was a public school employee, and students could see

the books that the decorations actually counted as government speech, which fell outside the

protection of the first amendment. Now, we think that's wrong and really out of step with the

Supreme Court's decision in 2022, and the Kennedy versus Bremerton School District case, and that case, the court rejected the idea that everything in a playee does within view of students is automatically government speech, and the descent in the night circuit recognizes this. He really put it plainly. He said that Rod's books were his personal expression. There are no different from the pride flags or the BLM posters that his colleagues were allowed to display,

and there was no evidence of any disruption in the descending judge's case. This isn't a hard case.

“So, the majority rules against him. What are the implications of this ruling?”

Well, we think it's a pretty broad and implications. The Kennedy decision was very clear that that teachers don't shed their constitutional rights when they are on campus just because students are seeing them when they're speaking. And so we're concerned that this decision really undermines the Kennedy decision, and would essentially allow the school to say that anything a teacher says while at school is automatically government speech, and they now no longer have

any first amendment rights. And this now also includes simply the books that they read.

Yeah, anything displayed in your office. In fact, you know, if and what this allows, the school to do is it will allow one, the school to allow one teacher to wear a pin supporting a certain position, but deny another teacher the the right to wear a pin supporting the opposite position. We think that's wrong. Both as a first amendment, but also, you know, it really sends the wrong message to students, because it makes it seem as if every adult at the school holds this same opinion on these issues,

“and that's just not the case. Right. I think it's pretty alarming from a parent's perspective.”

What's next for this particular case? Well, we have some options. We can either appeal to the entire night circuit, take it on-bomb, or we could appeal it straight to the Supreme Court. And we're still weighing our our options to hear. You know, I mean, Ron treated every student with kindness, with dignity and respect, and we're simply asking that he'd be allowed to do what every other teacher's allowed to do, decorate his offices and, you know, with kids affirming material,

and we want him to get his job back. Most is really a chilling message to not just employees, but students and parents. So we'll definitely keep a close eye on this case, Tyson. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. That was ADF's Tyson Langhoffer, and this has been a legal wire addition of morning wire.