New York Attorney General Letitia James has repeatedly run afoul of federal judges in her quest to regulate the speech of pro-life pregnancy centers, but that hasn't dissuaded her from trying to control speech on other polarizing issues in which courts have rebuked censors.
School board members and parents are now suing the AG and New York Education Commissioner Betty Rosa for allegedly threatening to remove the former from office for "publicly supporting sex-separated interscholastic sports and school facilities" or "using pronouns that correspond to biological sex" at board meetings, or even for letting the latter say the same things.
Filed by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the First Amendment lawsuit takes aim at guidance letters, a tool frequently used by AGs and regulators to share their interpretation of the law without bringing formal enforcement action that could trigger litigation, a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over potential targets.