The D.C. Public Schools system and Jackson-Reed High School on Wednesday agreed to end their ban on an Arab student group’s attempt to screen a pro-Palestinian documentary and host events about Palestinian culture after the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. brought a First Amendment lawsuit.
“Public school administrators cannot trample students’ First Amendment rights simply because they do not like what the students have to say. This victory reaffirms that students’ rights do not vanish at the school’s door,” said Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at ACLU-D.C.
The 19-member student group alleged that since December, school leaders had barred it from hosting an on-campus screening of “The Occupation of the American Mind,” a documentary that critiques Western media’s portrayal of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict but that has also been accused of antisemitism.
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The Biden administration plans to push ahead with more than $1 billion in weapons deals for Israel, U.S. officials told The Washington Post. The move comes despite the withholding of a shipment of bombs this month due to concerns over Israel’s plans for a major offensive in Rafah.
The Arab students said the school also canceled the club’s Palestinian Culture Night, barred the distribution of literature that depicted certain Palestinian cultural symbols, and prohibited them from handing out stickers with the outline of the Palestinian territories or ones that read “Free Palestine.”
In an interim agreement filed with the court, the students and ACLU-D.C. dropped their demand to show the film. Instead, they won permission to hold a classroom screening over lunch May 29 and 30 of one of three alternative films they proposed in January but said they had not been permitted to show: “The Wanted 18,” “Farha” or “5 Broken Cameras."
Students may also distribute a contested handout with slight modification. The group agreed to answer several questions in advance about their chosen film to Principal Sah Brown, such as why it was created and the author’s perspective and reliability. Brown agreed to email all faculty members and administrators with a set of clear standards that apply to student group events and activities, though specifics remain under discussion.
The dispute arose after the group said it wanted to humanize the Palestinian people to classmates and shed light on the conflict in the Middle East after Israel’s assault on Gaza, where more than 33,000 people — including 13,000 children — have been killed following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people.
The agreement was reached the same day as D.C. police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University, leading to the cancellation of a congressional hearing set by House Republicans to grill the mayor and the police chief. Also Wednesday, a separate House GOP-led panel accused heads of public school systems in New York City, Berkeley, Calif., and Montgomery County, Md., of not combating antisemitism.
Spokeswomen for D.C.’s public school system and D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
In a court filing Monday before the deal was reached, Schwalb’s office called the film that the student group initially wanted to screen “inflammatory and offensive” and said some of its handout materials contained “symbols that are so derogatory as to suggest that Israel, the only Jewish State, has no right to exist.” The District said the school told the group in March that it was open to airing any one of the proposed alternate films, but claimed the group did not follow up on requested information.
Matthew R. Blecher, chief of the D.C. attorney general office’s equity section in its civil litigation division, said the group sought “completely unencumbered speech rights” over a topic that has convulsed several university campuses with protests and at times violence in recent weeks.
“True, Plaintiff’s student members do not lose their rights to free expression upon entry into the classroom,” Blecher wrote. “But neither the Constitution nor any federal or local statute requires the District to forego editorial discretion over expressive activities that are misaligned with Jackson-Reed’s core values and pedagogical goals or that have an obvious tendency to disrupt classroom work and invade the rights of Jewish and Israeli students to a safe and intimidation free learning environment.”
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes commended the sides “for reaching a compromise and encourages them to continue collaborating” to resolve any remaining issues.
Reyes also denied for now a proposed friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday by prominent national and D.C.-area Jewish groups as well as Jackson-Reed parents who sided with the school system and warned of rising antisemitism since October at the school and in the outside world. Reyes said she would consider a future submission by the filers, which included the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the American Jewish Committee. Two parents also requested to be part of the friend-of-the-court brief, including a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a former Israeli government official and journalist.
Leaders of the groups said that, far from a win for the ACLU, the settlement upheld the school’s leadership and allowed students to show alternative movies they could have screened without the lawsuit. “We are glad that the Arab Student Union decided to not press to show a blatantly antisemitic movie at Jackson-Reed High School and cause further division, disruption, and polarization at the school,” said Guila Franklin Siegel, associate director at the Jewish Community Relations Council.
