Educator Rights to Support Student Activism

By: National Education Association

Published: April 5, 2023

This resource originally appeared on NEA.org

Students across the country are increasingly using their voices to raise awareness of issues that matter to them, including climate change and gun violence. Student activists have staged protests over the police killings of unarmed Black people and walkouts over inadequate COVID safety protocols and gun violence.

You have broad protections off duty to support such student activism. At work, however, your rights are much more limited.

Where student demonstrations occur at your employer or during work hours, you should work with your administrators to have plans ready for student activism.

Note that in higher education, numerous states have adopted legislation that purports to protect free speech on campus, typically in outdoor areas of campus labeled as “free speech zones.” Most state legislation of this type covers faculty, but some legislation only provides protection for faculty speech if it is within their “area of competence” or “reasonably germane to the subject matter of the class.”

"Students came to me and said, ‘We don’t see ourselves in our building, and we need your help. We’d like put up a Black Lives Matter banner somewhere in the school.’ So I said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.’ We had some obstacles in our way, but now we have a banner that proudly hangs in the cafeteria right now.”

— Rahaf Othman, high school history teacher, Illinois

1 Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0215; Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-7-2405, 2408.

Student Walkouts

Educators should engage with local districts to encourage districts to adopt plans about how to respond to student walkouts before the walkouts happen.

Such plans should address educators’ duties during student walkouts, including whether educators are supposed to accompany students during the walkout to ensure their safety.

Plans can facilitate student protest activity in a safe and educational manner by, for example, providing time and space for student demonstrations and guaranteeing that neither students nor educators will be penalized for participating in a walkout.

Plans should also address how families will be notified of planned walkouts, so that parents know their children may be out of school and unsupervised. Schools may also consider designating staff members to supervise the students or providing a safe space on campus for students to protest.

Absent the agreement or support of administrators, educators should not lead or assist in organizing student walkouts from classes, as such efforts would likely be considered an unlawful strike in violation of state and local laws or school district policies.

Neither the First Amendment nor state and local collective bargaining laws and agreements give educators a right to join student walkouts. As a consequence, you could face discipline or even termination for joining a walkout or helping students to organize a walkout.

To illustrate the point, a recent walkout that was conducted with the support of school administrators involved middle school students in San Francisco, California walking out for one period to demand a better wellness center with social workers and therapists. Teachers and a school resource officer joined the students outside to make sure they were safe. The school district held community meetings for parents to express their concerns. There was no report of students facing discipline. The San Francisco school supported and protected its students.

By contrast, at a high school in Warwick, Pennsylvania nearly all of the students who participated in a walkout received in-school suspensions. The students were protesting anti-LGBT bullying in the community. They missed their lunch period and one class. After the walkout, the school principal called students into her office one at a time and issued the suspensions for leaving class without permission and for being out of their assigned areas.

2 Melanie Woodrow, San Francisco’s Aptos Middle School students walk out of class in demand of improved wellness center, abc7NEWS (Feb. 21, 2020), https://abc7news.com/society/aptos-middle-school-in-sf-students-walk-out-for-improved-health-resources/5956561/.
3 Alex Geli, At least 11 Warwick students receive in-school suspension after Wednesday’s walkout, LNP | LancasterOnline (Feb. 16, 2020); Alex Geli, Warwick High School students walk out over use of homophobic, racial slurs, LNP | LancasterOnline (Feb 13, 2020).
4 In a statement that the district released after the student protest, the district asserted that “each student spent time with district administrators to share their concerns, which were previously unreported to the school.” It appears that the school did not have advance notice of the protest. Message from the Warwick School District, Warwick School District (Feb. 14, 2020), https://www.warwicksd.org/website/news.php?id=2958.

Student Clothing Demonstrations

Often, students demonstrate by wearing specific clothes and accessories. In a famous case from the 1960s, students wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. More recently, students have worn black to show solidarity for students of color. They have also deliberately violated school dress codes to protest gender or racial bias in enforcement.

The more general the action, the more likely it is that educators can participate. NEA members have worn specific colors to support other causes for years. For example, in recent years NEA has encouraged members to wear orange to urge support for gun reforms. Similarly, NEA and many NEA affiliates encourage members to wear red for ED on particular days.

These general showings of support for a cause have largely been permitted at schools without any disciplinary actions.

But schools can have school district policies that limit the messages educators convey in school, provided those policies are enforced in an even-handed manner and do not penalize only certain viewpoints.

In workplaces covered by bargaining laws, wearing union buttons and shirts is sometimes protected as concerted activity under state labor laws. And, in some instances, wearing buttons or shirts supporting specific actions at work may be protected as well.

You should always check with your union and understand your district’s policies before wearing buttons or shirts that advocate for specific movements or wearing buttons in support of a political cause or candidate.

5 Tracey Taylor, Berkeley High students wear black to show solidarity, Berkeleyside (Nov. 13, 2015), https://www.berkeleyside.org/2015/11/13/berkeley-high-students-wear-black-to-show-solidarity.
6 Liz Brazile, A new dress code for Seattle schools looks to eliminate gender and racial bias, Crosscut (Aug. 16, 2019), https://crosscut.com/2019/08/new-dress-code-seattle-schools-looks-eliminate-gender-and-racial-bias.
7 7 Questions Educators Are Asking About Their Rights to Speak Out, Protest, and Engage in Activism, NEA EdJustice (Mar. 12, 2018), https://neaedjustice.org/2018/03/12/7-questions-educators-asking-rights-speak-protest-engage-activism/.

Student Organizations

Students demonstrate at school to raise concerns that the school and/or society is not meeting. Educators can help give students an outlet to use their voice by supervising or sponsoring clubs that support students, such as a Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA) or a Black Student Union.

Under the Equal Access Act, students in secondary schools have the right to form student groups like GSAs, so long as the school authorizes other extracurricular student groups and the group is student-initiated.

Schools cannot discriminate against these groups based on their politics or viewpoint. They cannot single out some groups for extra restrictions or prevent them from using school bulletin boards, making announcements, hosting fundraisers, or engaging in other activities that the school allows other extracurricular groups to do.

Student Petitions

Because most schools want to appear neutral on controversial issues, educators generally should not sign student petitions.

When educators sign a petition, students in the community may believe the school itself is supporting the petition. Even when they understand that educators are signing as individuals, students may feel pressure to sign a petition if their teacher signs it because of educators’ positions of authority and influence over students.

Even online petitions are problematic, as educators could sign them outside of school only to have their students display them in school and ask other students to sign.

This page is intended to provide general information. For specific advice, you should always contact your local union or attorney.