School Mandates Milk Propaganda at Anti-Dairy Event
Uncowed, the protest organizer is suing.
A California high school student wanted to pass out literature critical of the dairy industry outside her school's cafeteria—but the school administration wouldn't let her, fearing that, unless she passed out pro-dairy flyers as well, the school would be found in violation of U.S. Department of Agriculture rules that bar anti-dairy speech on school grounds. The student has now filed a First Amendment lawsuit—challenging both the school's policy and the UDSA's pro-dairy regulations.
Marielle Williamson is a senior at Eagle Rock Junior/Senior High School in Los Angeles. Williamson is the president of the school's Animal Awareness Club, which seeks to raise awareness about the environmental and ethical consequences of animal product consumption. In February, Williamson sought permission from her school principal, Derek Steinorth, to pass out literature outside the school cafeteria on the environmental, ethical, and health implications of consuming dairy products.
According to the lawsuit, Steinorth gave a confusing response, telling her "You can have a table set up outside at lunch with her flyers on the pros and cons of drinking milk, but you should also have some literature for both sides of the debate," adding, "I don't think [these restrictions are] too unreasonable."
Obviously, being required to pass out material that would undermine her goals and beliefs concerned Williamson, who replied that if "sharing materials that promote dairy [is] required in order for [sic] to proceed with the event…we would not do the event."
She again emailed Steinorth to explain that "the point of this campaign is to counter industry-funded misinformation on dairy, and those flyers you provided fall into that category. Handing those out at the same time would defeat the purpose of our event." She asked for a final response as to whether the event could go forward as it was originally planned. Steinorth did not reply.
After several more follow-ups, Steinorth replied that he "was asked to make sure that those materials were available as well. I completely understand your point though." Williamson was unable to go forward with her event, fearing discipline if she were to pass out anti-dairy materials without also providing pro-dairy literature.
Like many public and private schools across the country, Eagle Rock participates in the USDA's National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Participating schools are subject to a litany of bizarre USDA regulations that mandate that officials "shall not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk products by the school (or by a person approved by the school) at any time or any place (i) on the school premises; or (ii) at any school-sponsored event."
Not only are schools barred from displaying any material that could deter students from drinking cow's milk, but they also can't make water too enticing for students as an alternative drink with their meals. "While water must be made available," the rule reads, "schools must not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk" and "are not to promote or offer water or any other beverage as an alternative selection to fluid milk throughout the food service area."
Further, students can only get dairy milk substitutes if they provide a written statement attesting to a disability that keeps them from drinking dairy milk. (It's worth noting that lactose intolerance is increasingly common, especially among Hispanic, black, and Asian populations.)
According to the lawsuit "The dairy industry monitors schools for alleged 'violations,'" of these "Milk Marketing Protections," and noncompliant schools can be subjected to fines. This, it seems, is what motivated Steinorth's concerns.
According to the suit, both the school's policy requiring that Williamson pass out pro-dairy literature and the USDA rules that seemed to motivate it, clearly violate Williamson's First Amendment rights to engage in nondisruptive political speech at school. Not only are the UDSA's regulations "unconstitutionally vague" and "objectively" chilling anti-dairy speech at schools, but also "by compelling Marielle to simultaneously distribute the dairy misinformation that she seeks to refute," the lawsuit argues, "District Defendants have violated Marielle's free speech rights."
Requiring students to pass out material that directly contradicts the purpose of their political speech—a practice the school district applies solely to the subject of dairy, not to other political topics—is clearly a violation of students' First Amendment rights. If Williamson succeeds in her lawsuit, she might not only strike down a bizarre school policy but the excessive government regulations that mandate schools to push dairy products on students.
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You know “mission creep” is real when one has to sue the Department of Agriculture for violating the U.S. Constitution.
(Insert the obligatory joke about being, or not being, “cowed…”)
Scope Creep: Reason 2003 – Private, raw milk sales between consenting adults shouldn’t be federally regulated. Reason 2023 – School suggesting student activists conduct both sides of a debate over having chocolate milk in the drinking fountains is government-mandated propaganda!
The reason the USDA has the regulations they have is because of Federal School Lunch Program and SNAP. There are very valid reasons why milk, and not caloried drinks like soda or commercial bottled water, can be advertised in that context. But let’s just pretend that perpetual-High-School-Sophomore-Activist Emma Camp has all the facts and is presenting them all fairly at her “Libertarian” anti-School Milk Propaganda Event.
Nota Bien: ctrl+f ‘choice’ (as in, school choice) 0 results.
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“Scope Creep: Reason 2003… etc., etc…”
I’m certainly not defending school lunch programs, obstacles to marketing raw milk, or, in fact, necessarily disagreeing with anything you brought up. I am defending her right to speak her mind.
As a minor, she doesn’t exactly have a right to speak her mind and the school has an obligation to make sure the speech she does have is edifying, not screeching.
The IL Nazis decide to hand out flyers after lunch, the school can say “No”. It would violate their free speech also. Assuming we do respect the IL Nazis’ right to free speech, making them present the other side or allow the other side to present is pretty equitable and educational.
Again, I don’t know what it was like in your school but mine didn’t have “Drink Daisy Brand Milk Products” up in the hallways. Same thing as S230 (violates), they win the government contract, but they can’t advertise because the audience is captive, since barring advertising arguably violates Daisy’s free speech, Coke, Pepsi, Fiji, and Perrier can’t advertise either.
End school lunch, privatize schools. Catering to the sensibilities of teen girls is how you wind up with cardboard straws and mandatory sex-change education.
Sorry, cardboard straws, taxes on soda beverages over 12 oz., *and* mandatory sex-change education.
> End school lunch, privatize schools.
things like regular meals and education shouldn’t be guaranteed to just ANY child.
Beats lying to them and taking their money in order to not educate their starving kids.
Yes they should…by the parents.
I am defending her right to speak her mind.
Not saying you, more specifically Reason (or even Emma), but same old, same old.
Even praying in silence after a high school game, non-mandatory, after-school, is a violation of the penumbras about separation of Church and State but a teen girl’s religious crusade against milk is speech without which democracy dies.
Your pet cause is not special. Fuck you. Cut spending.
Public school students are allowed to pray until their hearts’ are content. Teachers, coaches and administrators are NOT allowed to lead prayer, lest students feel intimidated, pressured or obligated to join them.
Teachers, coaches and administrators are NOT allowed to lead prayer, lest students feel intimidated, pressured or obligated to join them.
For much the same reason, faculty should not be involved in sexualizing children.
So everyone at school over 18 has no rights and everyone under is owed their rights by faculty, staff, administrators, and taxpayers, eh?
” Reason 2023 – School suggesting student activists conduct both sides of a debate over having chocolate milk in the drinking fountains is government-mandated propaganda!
It is, the material they want to force her to distribute is propaganda. You might agree with it, but it is material designed to promote a particular viewpoint.
“The reason the USDA has the regulations they have is because of Federal School Lunch Program and SNAP.”
So what?
” But let’s just pretend that perpetual-High-School-Sophomore-Activist Emma Camp has all the facts and is presenting them all fairly at her “Libertarian” anti-School Milk Propaganda Event.”
No, let’s not. She might be completely wrong, that doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not she’s correct. The government gets to decide who can express themselves on the basis of who is right.
She might be completely wrong, that doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not she’s correct.
Do you think you’re helping Reason, or anyone, with this?
I mean, it’s poorly worded, but he’s right. The anti-milk material might be factually incorrect, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not she should be allowed to present said material at school. Which is probably no.
> (as in, school choice)
you mispelled “segregation”.
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No, fascism would be if Ron was conspiring with Disney to give them direction on operations, and Disney was conspiring with Ron to give him political support.
That’s what fascism is about; keeping creeps from molesting children.
What makes you think the USDA rules came from Democrats? How do you know they didn’t have Republican or bipartisan backing?
I know my own relatives who are involved on boosting the dairy business are staunch Republicans.
Well that makes sense. We all know that milk is literally white supremacy.
Underrated comment.
Udderated.
Ruminate on that.
Some white supremacist types do actually post pics or videos of themselves drinking milk, because the ability to digest lactose as an adult somehow proves their genetic superiority.
Nooope. Fuck you Emma. It’s weird that a libertarian magazine that supports free thought would both advocate for spreading propaganda, while mixing in some of its own, and against greater freedom, down to the digestive leve, and the discussion around it.
Namely: It’s worth noting that lactose intolerance is increasingly common, especially among Hispanic, black, and Asian populations.
Yes it is. Almost the *exact* same way peanut allergies became increasingly common as people advocated it in and around school cafeterias and said advocates effectively crippled lots of people from having the natural human ability to digest peanuts. *That* is why forcing kids to step out of their ideological bubbles, do more research, and present both sides equally is the *exact* right answer.
You aren’t even a bleeding heart libertarian, you’re a useful idiot that wants to make sure the poors can’t avoid being forced to eat crickets by drinking milk.
Edit: “School Mandates Milk Propaganda at Anti-Dairy Event” <- Which part of this is, in any way, factual? Facts collected and presented by your opposition is hardly propaganda, they're entirely free to avoid collecting and presenting it, so it isn't mandatory, and "in the hallway after lunch" hardly constitutes an event and, even if it did, by the guidelines you yourself cite, the school isn't obligated to provide the students an "Event".
It is also useful to discourage Karenistic tendencies.
If she takes it to court, she will get creamed.
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“Nooope. Fuck you Emma. It’s weird that a libertarian magazine that supports free thought would both advocate for spreading propaganda,”
Except that they didn’t, they advocated for her right to state her case. Whether it is “propaganda” or not is irrelevant. The idea that the government can decide what is “propaganda” and ban it is fundamentally totalitarian.
“Namely: It’s worth noting that lactose intolerance is increasingly common, especially among Hispanic, black, and Asian populations.”
So because something bad is happening we can ban speech that might contribute to it. Like I said, totalitarian.
” *That* is why forcing kids to step out of their ideological bubbles, do more research, and present both sides equally is the *exact* right answer.”
Right forcing kids to say things they don’t want to is the answer. To what exactly? It’s not like the dairy industry isn’t presenting their “case”.
“You aren’t even a bleeding heart libertarian, you’re a useful idiot that wants to make sure the poors can’t avoid being forced to eat crickets by drinking milk.”
So because someone wants someone to be allowed to speak freely, they support every possible result of that view being expressed. Could you be more of a control freak?
This is quite idiotic. Being forced to include information that contradicts your speech is a restriction on speech, and one that serves *no* purpose whatsoever, let alone a compelling one.
You call it propaganda just because you disagree with it, and you think that merely by labeling it “propaganda” you’ve found some magic way to restrict it. You haven’t. This is an authoritarian position, one I frequently find in progressive discourse.
Peanut allergies are either greatly exaggerated, e.g. by parents who get hysterical when their kid gets an upset stomach by over-eating a treat that contains bean sugar that humans cannot digest, or they are real and usually the result of parents overprotecting kids to the point that their developing immune system can’t find any real germs to attack and looks for other targets.
Lactose intolerance is different. It is real, and affects most of Earth’s population other than two ethnic groups that historically relied on cows’ milk for a large part of their diets: Western Europeans, and descendants of the Masai and other herdsmen from east Africa. Those were the only two places mutations occurred and spread that left the lactose-digesting enzyme active after the age when you ought to stop drinking from your mother’s breasts and give your younger siblings a chance to survive. Not many East Africans were dragged clear across the continent to sell as slaves to the transatlantic slave trade (slave markets in the Middle East were closer), so if an African-American of school age or greater doesn’t get stomach upset from drinking milk, he most likely has quite a lot of white ancestors. Likewise, Asians, Native Americans, Latinos of mostly native ancestry, and many eastern Europeans are likely to be lactose intolerance.
“Increasing lactose intolerance” may be a real affect of more “diversity” (such as desegregation of schools or immigration from Latin America), or it may be the result of school administrations finally noticing the science as it applies to the students they formerly did not care about as much as the whitest ones.
Lactose intolerance is nothing like peanut allergies. Most animals can’t digest lactose as adults. Humans only developed the ability about 8,000 years ago when they began to domesticate animals such as cows. In areas where dairy animals weren’t common, most people never developed the ability. So, for instance, over three fourths of east Asians are lactose intolerant.
Is it too much to ask that students actually *study* when they’re in school? She can be aware of animals on her own time, not on our dime.
How do you know the student isn’t studying?
Maybe she’s taking a full load with AP classes, has a 4.0+ GPA.
I’ll bet you $500 she isn’t.
Really? She seems like the kind of busybody overachieving student who would be getting straight A’s, editing the school newspaper, and organizing protests.
Right, children shouldn’t be allowed to do anything between 9 and 3 except study.
If that were enforced, homework could be abolished, so, great idea.
I’ll assume that your 10 cent-parsimony extends to financing the athletic department? If any group of high school students needed to put in some quality study-time, it’s the knuckle-dragging sports-ball players.
From the context of the article, I’m pretty sure she’s proposing to do this during her lunch break.
What would happen if a student wanted an “anti-vax” event setting up a table handing out flyers outside the Nurse’s Office? I doubt that would go over well either.
To what extent does a school have to allow a student proselytizing for their strange beliefs?
“To what extent does a school have to allow a student proselytizing for their strange beliefs?”
We should leave that decision to the gatekeepers at the USDA who have the best interests of the students in mind and know harmful speech when they hear it.
^^^
Viewpoint discrimination in a public school is illegal, period. Unless a student is actually disrupting classes, they should be able to proselytize for whatever they want.
The looser is an eco facist retard, execute him and his parsnts
Seems highly disproportionate.
Cite?
Lennin, Pol pot, Mao, and the oxfor comma look like some disturbing sociopaths.
That’s highly disproportionate
The fundamental issue is why is a student activist event allowed in a high school at all? Shouldn’t you be in class young lady?
But noting that the event shouldn’t happen at all, if it does, it’s wrong to make her pass out information contrary to her beliefs. Compelled speech doesn’t feel any better at age 17.
Yeah, WTF, we should not be encouraging young adults to speak their minds politically!
In fact, why are you commenting on this political forum instead of providing for your family!
When these kids are in high school, they need to be in class studying. They can protest on their own time. Not ours.
WTF? It’s your time?
That may be the most un-linertarian thing I’ve ever seen said in the commentariat.
It’s our time because we’re paying for the schools. In Libertopia that would not be the case, but here we are.
But noting that the event shouldn’t happen at all, if it does, it’s wrong to make her pass out information contrary to her beliefs. Compelled speech doesn’t feel any better at age 17.
Nope. She wants to come to a school board meeting a bleat about the evils of milk for her 5 min. to people who actually control the contracts, fine. In school, they don’t owe her an “event” to begin with and asking that they present the other side or effectively find a classmate to make it for them in exchange for hosting the “event” they aren’t obligated to host in the first place is *beyond* fair. Asking other, captive, students to tolerate her and her alone absent an opposition which would be educational is actual, no-shit propaganda.
As punishment she should be force to read all of soldier medics comments and create a full page cited refute for every point.
I kid, she’s illiterate
“The fundamental issue is why is a student activist event allowed in a high school at all?”
Because you’re allowed to say things in school. That’s all she’s doing.
” Shouldn’t you be in class young lady?”
Well if there are students outside the cafeteria then it’s probably lunch. But keep jumping to stupid conclusions, it’s probably the only exercise you get.
Again, if the students are just ‘outside the cafeteria’, it’s not an event and they didn’t cancel anything. She’s free to tell her friends and classmates about the evils of milk in passing. If she wants to reach out to everyone, she can put up a flyer on the bulletin board and/or start an extracurricular club just like every wannabe rock star, chess nerd, and star gazer. If that’s not enough, she’s still not owed a platform outside the cafeteria any more than the chess nerds are owed a table or the wannabe rock stars are owed a stage.
Even adults aren’t owed an unfettered free platform to loiter outside the cafeteria and hand out anything they please to children.
Ever heard of lunch breaks? I saw nothing in the article that suggested she was asking to do this during class time.
It’s irrelevant. The lactose intolerant already don’t drink milk.
Has your opinion been Properly Certified to be Lactose Free, Gluten Free, Fair Wage, Low-Carbon-Emissions, Cruelty Free, Hurt-Baby-Feelings-Free, Organic, and Plutonium Free?
The funny thing about it too is, at a fundamental level, the argument is that if some white people suddenly developed the ability to perform photosynthesis tomorrow, we should block out the sun because a greater proportion of black and brown people can’t photosynthesize.
Males are on average bigger and more athletically capable than girls. Pass out flyers banning sports and forcing everyone to sit in desks and nothing else because a lack of athletic ability is increasingly common in biological cis-females.
Primary congenital alactasia the only genetic form of lactose intolerance and it’s autosomal recessive nor rising in prevalence. Everything else is acquired or progressive (which wouldn’t affect children and teens).
Being exceedingly generous to the anti-milk campaign: Imagine Americans moving to Mexico and insisting that the school system clean up their tap water (even if they do provide bottled water) and/or provide milk. Ir a casa, gringo.
Ah, high school, where the inmates are still children but are absolutely, positively, totally dude sure they are grown up adults with rights to all the associated privileges. And the political urges they have are reasoned and rational, and justified to be distributed to a captive audience. Who do they think they are, teachers?
“but are absolutely, positively, totally dude sure they are grown up adults with rights to all the associated privileges. ”
Children still have rights.
“And the political urges they have are reasoned and rational, and justified to be distributed to a captive audience. ”
They have the right to speak things that aren’t “reasoned and rational” according to you. As for captive audiences they have the right to not take the flyers or to throw them away.
Good news, Emma. You don’t need an ID to get a drink of milk.
Funny how the solution to speech people don’t like is more speech… right up until someone proposes more speech.
More speech is great, so long as you aren’t forcing a particular person to do that more speech.
A perfect example of why freedom of speech doesn’t work in COMMUNIST organizations.
Just another blessing of Commie-Education.
Humorously the BS she wants to preach is the exact same BS being taught in Commie-Education. Pick a valuable product and use mobster-gang POWER + Gov-Guns to Human-Force the ban on it. That *is* the foundation of unrestrained “democracy”; everything is FORCED to who ever screams like a baby the loudest.
That is what the younger generation is learning. How to out-gang others/everything with unrestrained Gov-Guns and feel superior by the bully instinct.
Maybe it’s time to stop praising socialism, communism and “democracy” before it’s to late. And start praising principles of Individual Liberty and Justice for all?
This is a public school, so your options are gay, trans, slavery, holocaust and Republicans are bad. Definitely NOT dairy farming.
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How can a contract between 2 parties (USDA and the school board) be enforced on a third party (students)?
rent seeking — the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits
Textbook definition.