Sarah Ecke, a math teacher at Connetquot Central High School in Bohemia, New York, hung two Progress Pride flags in her classroom. One of them was at least twice the size of the nearby American flag.
The Second Circuit just told her — and her two colleagues who joined her lawsuit — that a math classroom is for math.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the Connetquot Central School District did not violate three teachers' First Amendment rights when it ordered the removal of Pride flags and LGBTQ+ stickers from their classrooms. The ruling was authored by Circuit Judge Alison Nathan — Biden's openly lesbian appointment to the Second Circuit, one of only two openly LGBT+ women in history to serve on a federal appeals court. It affirmed a lower court dismissal from April 2025 out of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The case goes back to 2022. Assistant Superintendent Reza Kolahifar told staff that "the only flags that should be hung in a classroom or office are the American flag and the New York State flag." The district cited its own policy against political activities on school grounds. Three teachers — Christopher Dolce, an openly gay math teacher, along with Sarah Ecke and Shinaide McAleavey-Polley — sued, claiming the ban violated their constitutional rights and amounted to discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The court was unpersuaded. Judge Nathan wrote that "the question in this case is whether that same principle applies to displays hung on the walls of a public high school teacher's math classroom. We hold that it does." The panel applied the precedent set in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the 2006 Supreme Court case establishing that public employees speaking pursuant to their official duties are not insulated from employer discipline by the First Amendment. Classroom wall decorations, the court held, fall squarely within a teacher's official duties — and the district has every right to regulate them.
The ruling went further. The panel found the teachers had not plausibly shown that the district selectively enforced its policies. A neutral policy, neutrally applied — enforced without exception.
Now, the usual legal advocacy groups are already calling this a civil rights violation — largely the same organizations that celebrated Judge Nathan's confirmation in 2022. Her ruling specifically noted teachers can still wear Pride pins, display photos of same-sex partners at their desks, and even fly the Progress Pride flag during voluntary Gay-Straight Alliance club meetings held outside regular class time. The ruling left personal expression intact. What it restricted was converting a captive classroom of students into a billboard for a teacher's politics.
Over 200 people rallied against the district's policy back in October 2022. Superintendent Lynda Adams held firm. The district went to court. They won at the district level. They won again on appeal. Four years of litigation to establish what most parents already knew: the classroom belongs to the students, not the teacher's ideology.
The distinction the court drew matters. A Pride pin on a lanyard is personal expression. A flag twice the size of Old Glory mounted on the wall behind a teacher's desk is a statement from the institution — and the institution gets to decide what statements it makes.
The American flag and the New York State flag. That's the policy. Two federal courts have now agreed it's constitutional.
When "teach math" is a controversial position, the controversy isn't coming from the people who want math taught.
