In a victory for free speech and parents’ rights, a federal judge restored Manhattan mom Maud Maron to her seat on the New York City schools parent council. Maron had been on the parent council until Chancellor David Banks kicked her out of her position in June, claiming that she had violated the city code of conduct for parent council leaders when she spoke to the New York Post about antisemitism at her daughter’s public school.
The parental code of conduct, which allegedly gave Banks the power to discipline and remove parents from school boards, was implemented by New York City in 2021 in response to parents fighting back against COVID-era school closures and mask mandates.
Maron, along with another New York City parent, had criticized the implementation of this code of conduct in 2021, saying that the situation was “a classic case of government trying to censor speech it finds inconvenient…A code of conduct, if properly implemented, is not unreasonable. But the fox shouldn’t guard the henhouse: The [Department of Education] cannot enforce an overbroad and pretextual code of conduct clearly designed to silence parents.”
It is telling that Chancellor Banks attempted to do just that: silence Maud Maron for her speech. As director of Independent Women’s Law Center, May Mailman, wrote, Banks’s decision stood in opposition to “the core American value of debate…We should all be fearful of this…quest to rid certain, truthful, viewpoints from the public sphere. ”
Fortunately, we have a constitutional right in this country to free speech. In the court order that reinstated Maron, Judge Diane Gujurati stated that New York City’s parental code of conduct was unconstitutional as applied to Maron. Gujarati added, “Securing First Amendment rights is in the public interest.”
Gujarati is right, especially seeing that there are few matters of public interest more pressing than our nation’s public schools, far too many of which are failing to teach basic reading and math. This is why protecting parental rights is so crucial, and why Maron’s reinstatement is good news for us all: parents, not bureaucrats, know what’s best for their children. At the end of the day, only with parental involvement and input can public schools do their jobs and effectively educate our nation’s children.