South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has announced his leadership in a 17-state initiative to support legislative efforts aimed at excluding racially or sexually divisive materials from public schools. The South Carolina legislature recently passed a budget proviso prohibiting the use of state funds for educational content that suggests racial or sexual superiority or inherent bias based on race or sex.
Attorney General Wilson stated, “Our schools are supposed to be places of learning and collaboration, not indoctrination into woke ideologies that assign blame or condemnation based on race or sex.”
A lawsuit has been filed by the South Carolina NAACP, two authors, a teacher, and several students challenging the proviso on First Amendment grounds. In response, attorneys general have submitted a friend-of-the-court brief supporting lawmakers’ authority over educational content.
The brief argues that while individuals have a right to information under the First Amendment, this does not extend to compelling government-funded schools to include specific curricula. “A citizen’s right to receive information under the First Amendment is not a right to compel or extract information from the government at the taxpayers’ expense,” they wrote.
The attorneys general contend that the proviso restricts access to certain materials only within public schools funded by taxpayers and does not infringe upon individual rights outside this context. They urge the Court to dismiss the case due to its perceived lack of merit regarding First Amendment claims.
Attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia join Attorney General Wilson in this effort.
