Filed in 2022, the lawsuit argued that the school district’s selective policy violated the First Amendment rights of the plaintiffs—Bob and Cynthia Cajune, Kalynn Kay Aaker, and her minor children—by engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. In June 2024, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s decision, ruling that the Lakeville School District could not classify the display of Black Lives Matter posters as “government speech” and that it had committed “impermissible viewpoint discrimination.”
With the Eighth Circuit’s decision clearly signaling that the school district’s policy was constitutionally unsound, Lakeville Schools wisely reversed their policy and removed the posters from district facilities.
Because that was what the plaintiffs had sought in the lawsuit, they agreed to dismiss their claims in the settlement in return for the District paying $30,000 in legal fees to the Upper Midwest Law Center.
Doug Seaton, President of UMLC, which represents the plaintiffs, commented, “Our taxpayer-funded schools are a place for students to learn the skills needed for their success and our country’s success, not places for community activists to indoctrinate kids into divisive political viewpoints for 8 hours a day. Our goal in this lawsuit was to make school school again, and after the Eighth Circuit win and the removal of the posters, that is exactly what happened. This settlement ensures that viewpoint discrimination will not be tolerated in Minnesota’s public schools, and it reaffirms the principle that School Districts must be politically neutral and that all political viewpoints should be allowed equal expression.”
Plaintiff Bob Cajune also said: “From the beginning, all we asked for from the school district was equal treatment for our views and a neutral environment for Lakeville kids to learn and focus on achieving excellence. The school district’s decision to end the poster series demonstrates that equality and focus, so we have now achieved everything we wanted in the lawsuit. We hope this settlement ensures that all perspectives can be expressed in our schools without fear of selective censorship or retaliation.”
