Freedom of Speech

The settlement includes an admission of liability by the School Board, a joint request for the Court to permanently block the school district from banning Jones from school property for her past social media posts, and a $70,000 payment for damages and attorney fees

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. –A federal judge has granted the ACLU of Kentucky’s motion for a preliminary injunction, preventing Jenkins Independent School District from enforcing its ban against Letcher County parent Elizabeth Jones while her lawsuit proceeds.

Between January 20th and January 29th, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Orders 14168, 14185, and 14190, which ban topics such as “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology” from federally funded K-12 education. Since then, the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), which provides pre-kindergarten, elementary, and secondary education to approximately 67,000 dependents of military personnel around the world, has removed books, parts of curriculums, and cultural awareness celebrations from school grounds. DoDEA has placed hundreds of school library books in “quarantine,” reviewing them for permanent removal. These books include award-winning titles such as To Kill A Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, The Kite Runner, A Queer History of the United States, as well as hundreds of other books about gender, class, and race. Additionally, DoDEA educators have been instructed to alter their curriculums to remove mentions of gender, race, immigration, and various facets of developmental health. The ACLU is representing a group of DoDEA students ranging in grades from pre-kindergarten to high school whose educational opportunities have been limited by these executive orders. The lawsuit asserts that President Trump’s Executive Orders infringe on the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and seeks the reinstatement of removed books and curricula.