This Monday saw a pivotal move by the Liberty Justice Center, renowned for its 2018 Janus v. AFSCME triumph, as it requested an Oregon court to restore the position of a dismissed high school track and field coach. This coach had suggested creating a distinct category for transgender athletes, aiming to ensure girls compete solely against other girls.
John Parks, who has dedicated four decades to coaching track and field in Oregon, drafted an open letter advocating for this separate category at a state championship event for track and field. His proposal led to his termination in June by both the Lake Oswego School District and the Lake Oswego School Board, under allegations of harassment towards transgender athletes at recent competitions, allegations that Parks vehemently denies.
The Liberty Justice Center took legal action on July 24, filing a lawsuit defending Parks’ First Amendment rights. The lawsuit argues that Parks’ dismissal was a retaliatory act for his letter, infringing on his freedom of speech. The Center has also gathered statements from several parents of athletes from the Lake Oswego track and field team, who coached under Parks in 2024, supporting the call for his reinstatement.
“School employees do not lose their constitutional right to free speech when they step onto school grounds,” Buck Dougherty, Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, stated. “Coach Parks faced unjust and unconstitutional retaliation at the hands of the Lake Oswego School District and School Board. We urge the court to grant a preliminary injunction to uphold his First Amendment rights.”
The Janus ruling by the Supreme Court established that the State of Illinois’ “extraction of agency fees from nonconsenting public-sector employees violated the First Amendment,” as explored by Oyez, a Supreme Court rulings archive. The ruling elaborated, “the Court concluded that the state’s collection of agency fees from nonconsenting public employees was a violation of the First Amendment … the Court stated that requiring individuals to endorse ideas they disagreed with runs counter to First Amendment principles, and that even under a more permissive standard than the ‘exacting’ strict scrutiny that the Court had applied in evaluating the constitutionality of agency fees in the past, the Illinois scheme could not pass muster.”
