The Bureaucratic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Free Speech

Students from Mariemont High School walked out of school and marched on the Board of Education demanding to be heard Wednesday, January 28, 1981. District Superintendent Dr. Donald Thompson and Asst. Superintendent Dr. James Stock met with the student in the Middle Schools Auditorium and answered questions for about an hour.  The 1981 Mariemont teachers’ strike was the longest educational work stoppage in the history of American public education. More than fifty teachers made the decision to go on strike and eventually lost their jobs during this educational crisis. Teachers of the Mariemont District Education Association were seeking a master contract, a collective bargaining agreement, and salary increases. After 5 days of being on strike, all 50 of the striking teachers were fired by the Mariemont Board of Education. (© James D. DeCamp | http://JamesDeCamp.com | 614-367-6366) [Photographed on Kodak Tri-X Pan film with Canon F-1 Cameras and Canon L series lenses.]

NOTE:  This was written in the Fall of 1981 for an Ohio University English class (thank you Prof. BeeBee) who wanted a real life narrative in the style of your favorite author.  At the time I was deeply into the Douglas Adams ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ series. 🙂

You can read the official press release written when the case was filed in March 1981 HERE

You can read the full Restraining Order HERE

And Plantiff Exhbits HERE

The Bureaucratic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Free Speech: Or, How I Accidentally Ended Up in a First Amendment Battle With People Who Should Have Known Better

It began, as many absurd bureaucratic nightmares do, in a high school. Specifically, Mariemont High School, where I – an unsuspecting student armed only with a camera, a working knowledge of aperture settings, and a troublingly persistent sense of journalistic duty – stumbled into one of the most ridiculous legal battles ever waged over a photograph of people standing near a building.

The Crime: Journalism, Which is Apparently Illegal Now

There I was, camera in hand, capturing the very real and quite visible fact that students and teachers were protesting outside the school. I wasn’t uncovering some grand conspiracy or photographing clandestine government meetings in a smoky backroom. I was literally documenting reality.

Then the Cincinnati Enquirer published my photos. And suddenly, reality became a problem.

Enter Principal Keith Bihn and Superintendent Donald R. Thompson, who had apparently mistaken themselves for the Supreme Lords of Information Control. They called me in, sat me down, and – with what I assume was their best “we are very serious men” faces – declared that I was now forbidden from taking any more pictures. Not just of the protests – of anything.

It was at this point that I suspected I had unknowingly wandered into some kind of bureaucratic fever dream where logic was optional and the school administration had decided to test the very limits of cause-and-effect relationships.

“You’re telling me I can’t take pictures?” I asked.
“That’s right,” they said.
“But… other students can take pictures.”
“Yes.”
“And there are no actual rules against photography.”
“Well, there are now.”

I sat there, blinking, wondering if I had accidentally fallen through a wormhole and landed in an alternate dimension where principals could bend the laws of the universe simply by declaring it so.

And then, the pièce de résistance: They informed me that if I published any more photos, they’d have me suspended or arrested.

At this point, I was pretty sure I had entered an episode of some low-budget legal satire where the main plot line involved watching authority figures spiral into self-inflicted disaster at an increasingly alarming pace.

The Response: Deploying the Legal Cavalry

The good news is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, reality is still legally binding in most courts of law.

Enter the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that exists largely to remind people in power that they do not, in fact, get to make up new constitutional amendments based on their mood.

The ACLU took one look at my situation and immediately filed suit, dragging Bihn and Thompson into a First Amendment legal skirmish that should never have been necessary in a functioning society.

Their argument? Total nonsense. Their defense read like something out of a badly written dystopian novel, full of vague assertions that sounded important but collapsed under the weight of actual logic.

The Trial: A Theatrical Display of Bureaucratic Panic

The school’s defense strategy was a masterclass in legal absurdity, the courtroom equivalent of watching someone attempt to assemble Ikea furniture without instructions while insisting they know exactly what they’re doing.

First, they argued that schools had a right to control their image – which is true, if you are a sentient PR campaign and not, in fact, a public institution subject to constitutional law.

Then, with the confidence of a man attempting to bluff his way through a high-stakes poker game with nothing but a 2 of clubs and a receipt for a sandwich, they claimed that my photos were disruptive.

As if the protests themselves weren’t already headline news across Ohio. As if banning one student from taking pictures was somehow going to erase the reality of an entire labor strike. This was akin to blaming a meteorologist for a hurricane and then fining them for standing in the rain.

And finally, the pièce de résistance of bureaucratic nonsense: the classic “because we said so” defense.

This is an argument that has been deployed by tired parents, authoritarian regimes, and confused middle managers throughout history, but it has never once held up in a court of law.

The ACLU, meanwhile, brought what I can only describe as a thermonuclear legal hammer to the proceedings. Citing every major First Amendment case from the last half-century, they presented arguments that should have been insultingly obvious to anyone who had even glanced at a Constitution in passing.

• Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): The landmark case that ruled students do not, in fact, “shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” Which is exactly what the school was trying to argue, except with more frantic hand-waving and less legal credibility.

• Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988): This one was the closest thing the school had to an actual argument, as it gave schools some control over student publications. But here’s the thing – it only applied to school-sponsored publications. Since I wasn’t shooting for the Mariemont Yearbook & State-Approved Thought Digest, this case was entirely irrelevant.

• New York Times Co. v. United States (1971): That’s right, they even referenced the Pentagon Papers, because apparently, in the grand cosmic scale of government censorship, my high school had decided to plant its flag next to Richard Nixon.

By the time the closing arguments rolled around, even the judge looked exhausted. It was clear to everyone in the room that this was a case that should never have made it past the first angry phone call.

The Verdict: Bureaucracy Loses, Reality Wins

The ruling came down with all the gentle subtlety of an anvil being dropped from orbit.

The court found that I had been singled out for censorship, that the school had no legal grounds to block my photography, and that threatening a student with arrest for publishing a picture was, in legal terms, completely unhinged.

Bihn and Thompson had spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort trying to justify a policy that made as much legal sense as a tax on oxygen.

And now they had an official court ruling documenting their incompetence for all eternity.

What Did We Learn From This Ridiculous Ordeal?

1. 1. Bureaucracy will always double down on its own mistakes. If given a choice between admitting they were wrong and setting themselves on fire, some people will reach for the nearest box of matches.
   2. The First Amendment is still, shockingly, in effect. Despite the best efforts of school administrators to wish it out of existence.
   3. If you ever find yourself in a position of authority and your first instinct is to ban, censor, or threaten someone for making you look bad… you might want to consider the possibility that you were the villain all along.

And most importantly: if you ever take a picture that makes people in power uncomfortable, congratulations – you’re probably doing something right.