Per Moody, 603 U.S. at 725, "[t]he next order of business is to decide which of the [law's] applications violate the First Amendment, and to mea- sure them against the rest." To that end, we instruct the district court as to the law governing its analysis of each potential application of the Act.
1. Law of the First Amendment As regards textbooks, curricula, classroom instruction, administrative activities, and other official activities of public institutions, states possess broad power "free from [the First Amendment's] viewpoint-neutrality re- quirement" to "promote policies and values of its own choosing" and ensure that taxpayer money spent on education "accomplishes the states' educa- tional objectives."33H.B. 1193 primarily regulates the curricula and public _____________________
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speech of official organs of the state—schools and colleges—and therefore most of its sweep rests squarely within the heartland of the state govern- ment's plenary police power.
If there is any "interplay" between personal speech rights and a state's prerogative to hold its agents accountable to the will of the people, the district court should apply the Garcetti framework as outlined in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. 507, 527 (2022).34Under Kennedy, there _____________________
"legitimately" exercises power "over what teachers may (or may not) teach in the class- room."). Cf. Shurtleff v. City of Boston, 596 U.S. 243, 247-48 (2022) (government's regu- lation of its own speech need not be viewpoint-neutral).
In addition to being binding precedent in this circuit, Chiras is the textbook exam- ple of the law governing curricular decisions in most of the country. See Derek Black, Education Law: Equality, Fairness, and Reform 856-61 (3d ed. 2021) (reprinting Chiras as the seminal federal case demonstrating that viewpoint discrimination challenges are inapplicable in selection of textbooks and regulation of curricula).
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are two steps: First, the court must determine whether a public employee is speaking per official duties, that is, within the scope of his or her employ- ment; and second, if not, the court must balance the interests of the state in pursuing its public policies against the individual speech rights at issue. Id. at 527-28 (citing Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 421, 423, 417 (2006)). Where academic freedom—e.g., professors' license to produce and publish scholarly work—may be implicated, "'additional'" First Amend- ment interests "may or may not" come into play "in some cases." Id. at 528 (quoting Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 425).35But, as the Supreme Court noted in Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia, "[w]hen the Uni- versity determines the content of the education it provides, it is the Univer- sity speaking, and we have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed," even "when it enlists private entities" such as professors "to convey its own message." 515 U.S. 819, 833 (1995).36 _____________________
a state statute is "not to decide what the State should do, but what it may do." Id. at 1166 (Lagoa, J., dissenting).
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So, as concerns textbooks, curricula, mandatory activities, and in- struction, Chiras applies and rightly protects Mississippi's constitutionally preserved plenary power to "promote policies and values of its own choos- ing" and to maintain that all education funded at the expense of Mississip- pians "accomplishes [Mississippi's] educational objectives." Chiras, 432 F.3d at 613, 611. Meanwhile, as far as the personal (e.g., non-curricular) statements of teachers and professors in the classroom are implicated, the district court must follow Kennedy's application of Garcetti and balance the interests of the state in pursuing its public policies against the individual speech rights at issue. See Kennedy, 597 U.S. at 527-28 (citing Garcetti,
547 U.S. at 421, 423, 417 (2006)). Thus, Chiras and Kennedy harmonize well, given that curricula, instruction, and textbooks are in the heartland of the scope of employment of educators.
2. Law Governing Void-for-Vagueness Challenges A law may be found facially void for vagueness only where it "is so unclear" that people "'must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application'" "'in all of its applications.'"37Vagueness challenges will _____________________
circuit. Little, 138 F.4th at 843 (citing Muir v. Ala. Educ. Television Comm'n, 688 F.2d 1033, 1045 n.30 (Former 5th Cir. 1982) (en banc)).
See also Chiras v. Miller, 432 F.3d at 611-13, 612 n.25 (general values discussed in Epperson do not trump plenary state discretion in government speech, including curricula,
"even where it chooses to employ private speakers" such as professors "to transmit its message" unless government does so ultra vires). Cf. Buchanan v. Alexander, 919 F.3d 847, 853 (5th Cir. 2019) ("[I]n the college classroom context, speech that does not serve an academic purpose" is not of public concern and therefore "falls outside the protection of the First Amendment.").
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not succeed in striking down statutes with "hypothetical interactions" and
"speculative scenarios" when context allows the average observer to under- stand its "'common-sense core of meaning.'"38Words and phrases such as _____________________
2026). That case dealt with a challenge to a municipal policy restricting public participants at city council meetings from "personal, impertinent, . . . slanderous" or "boisterous"
remarks or conduct, on pain of a bar from "further audience before the [Bossier City] Council" unless the council granted permission by majority vote. Id. at 400. The First Amendment's protections are stronger in the cases, like Merriott, dealing with political assemblies. See, e.g., Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393, 403 (2007). McClelland, meanwhile, dealt with a vagueness challenge with First Amendment implications in the education context, just as does the case at bar. See McClelland, 63 F.4th at 1004-05, 1008-09, 1013-14. For facial void-for-vagueness claims in the education con- text, McClelland is the law of the circuit, even if the First Amendment is implicated. The district court should not confuse necessity and sufficiency. While it is true that "[e]ven under a 'stringent' test, this court 'will not hold a law unconstitutionally vague on its face if it is clear what the ordinance as a whole prohibits or if the ordinance is surely valid in the vast majority of its intended applications,'" that does not mean that clarity of prohibition or validity in "the vast majority of intended applications" sets the standard for surviving a vagueness challenge. Merriott, 179 F.4th at 407 (quoting Roy v. City of Monroe,
950 F.3d 245, 252 (5th Cir. 2020) (quotation marks omitted)). That language was and re- mains descriptive of the heartland of laws that suffice to pass vagueness challenges; McClelland sets the standard of what is necessary for a vagueness challenge to strike down a law. That standard is high because part of the role of courts is to bring clarity to facially complicated laws at the stage of application. See Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678, 720 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) (judiciary must "clarify and settle" the "meaning and operation" of laws, even where unclear (citation omitted)).
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"expressing or celebrating views or ideas,"39"promote,"40and "support"41 have been held to survive a vagueness challenge, especially where the context of a complex statutory scheme informs the meaning of such terms. If there is a foreseeable application of the law in which there is a clear core of meaning that a rational regulated party could understand—i.e., if there is at least some identifiable set of conduct that the prohibitions rea- sonably probably cover—a void-for-vagueness challenge must fail. The fact that a portion of a law's application is vague or that an isolated term is subject to different meanings in hypothetical scenarios will not lead to a successful vagueness challenge.
* * * * *
The plaintiffs have a high burden to show that this policy is unlawful. Their chore is even greater given the fact that theirs is a facial challenge rather than a challenge to the law as-applied, making their case "hard to win." Moody, 603 U.S. at 723. On remand, the new district judge should apply the above law in each applicable situation within the foreseeable scope of H.B. 1193 and proceed to determine the constitutionality of the law in each arena. Once that judge has done so, he or she will determine whether "the ratio of unlawful-to-lawful applications" of H.B. 1193 is so "lopsided" as to _____________________
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substantially outweigh the lawful reach of the law.42 The preliminary injunction is VACATED, and this matter is REMANDED. The Chief Judge of the Southern District of Mississippi is DIRECTED to assign this case to a different district judge for all further proceedings.
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Haynes, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I concur in the last paragraph of the majority opinion. I think it is important on the remand to take a more full look at the House Bill 1193 in play. I also think it is very important to make sure that teachers at school are in no way limited or forbidden from teaching the students not to discriminate as set out in Title VII, including race, color, religion, sex, gender, etc.
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