Censorship in Wetzel County Schools

Employees who moderate the Facebook page for Wetzel County Schools are engaging in illegal “viewpoint discrimination” against the Paden City community.

Supporters of Paden City High School have registered periodic complaints about the behavior in recent months. But the outcry reached a fever pitch last week when the school system’s social media team deleted several comments and reportedly blocked multiple users in rapid fire.

Preventing people with PCHS ties from interacting in a government-run forum violates the First Amendment, according to federal court precedent. But when people pointed that out in comments, Wetzel County Schools deleted those, too, and then turned off the commenting feature altogether.

Crashing the PCHS party
The latest clash between Wetzel County Schools and the Paden City community is an outgrowth of repeated attempts to permanently or temporarily close PCHS.

Superintendent Cassandra Porter is behind that crusade, but she is not acting alone. School board President Linda Fonner recently endorsed Porter’s efforts to close PCHS because of potential chemical pollution. The school board as a whole also is implicitly backing Porter by funding her appeal of the July 31 court ruling that reopened PCHS.

The message obviously is being heard inside the Wetzel County Schools administration building as well. Paul Huston II, the secondary education director and county administrator, recently told other schools in the county they could not play football on PCHS’ field. Then the school system’s social media team anonymously confronted the Paden City community online.

Ironically, that persistent targeting of Paden City commenters occurred on a Facebook post about a “Welcome Home Party” at PCHS. The party was a direct result of Wetzel County Schools closing PCHS on July 1.

I started seeing complaints about Facebook moderation by Wetzel County Schools the afternoon of Aug. 20. I worked as an online communications strategist for several years, so I know a volatile situation when I see one. I have witnessed (and regrettably joined) enough Internet spats not to take every suspicion of mischief at face value. The sudden closure and forced reopening of PCHS is an environment ripe for misunderstandings.

But after watching the conversation play out for a while and collecting digital evidence, I concluded that the allegations against the Wetzel County Schools moderator were warranted. Just to be sure, I added two comments of my own on the post that became the flashpoint.

My input was not inflammatory. I shared a quote from and link to a Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that limits how government officials can regulate speech on their social media channels. “The Fourth Circuit includes the state of West Virginia and Wetzel County,” I said. “This is binding precedent.”

I fully expected the school’s Facebook moderator to kill my unwanted commentary. Although it was online long enough to get a few “likes,” the crackdown inevitably came. I wasn’t the first person to warn the county it was violating the First Amendment, but I was the last. They locked down the Facebook page, and now no one can comment.

As of this morning, the post about Paden City’s welcome-home party at PCHS says there are still 11 comments on it, but only one is visible. It is the only critical comment that survived the censorship by Wetzel County Schools.

Anything but neutral and evenhanded
Social media is a relatively new form of government communication, so the case law governing free speech in that context is still being written. But the existing precedents do not reflect well on Wetzel County. The Fourth Circuit ruling in particular is detrimental.

That case pitted School Board Chairwoman Phyllis Randall of Loudoun County, Virginia, against Brian Davison, a county resident who posted comments about alleged corruption and conflicts of interest to her Facebook page. Randall deleted her original post to get rid of Davison’s criticism, and then she banned him from the page for several hours.

Although Randall reconsidered the next morning and lifted the ban, Davison sued. Judge James Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia sided with Davison. The judge found that Randall’s actions were “relatively inconsequential as a practical matter” but still violated Davison’s First Amendment rights.

“When one creates a Facebook page, one generally opens a digital space for the exchange of ideas and information,” Cacheris wrote, adding that Randall “allowed virtually unfettered discussion” on hers. In banning Davison, she did not apply a “neutral policy” or treat him in an “evenhanded manner.” She was just offended by his comments.

“If the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence makes anything clear,” Cacheris wrote, “it is that speech may not be disfavored by the government simply because it offends.”

The Fourth Circuit upheld that ruling by unanimous vote. “Randall’s decision to ban Davison because of his allegation of governmental corruption constitutes black-letter viewpoint discrimination,” the appeals court found.

The situation in Davis v. Randall isn’t an exact parallel to what happened on the Wetzel County Schools Facebook page last week, but the similarities are striking. During the back-and-forth, a moderator for the school system referenced page rules in force since 2019 as a defense, but the moderator neither followed those rules nor applied them evenhandedly. Comments disappeared simply because they offended the moderator.

The premise behind the rules also violates the free-speech standard as defined by Cacheris. The opening sentence says, “In keeping a positive experience for our page visitors, we reserve the right to take down photos, comments and other material deemed ‘unproductive’ by the Wetzel County Schools social media team.” By enforcing a “positive experience” and deleting “unproductive” material, government employees are censoring speech that they deem offensive.

A teachable First Amendment moment
The Wetzel County Board of Education should care enough about education to seize this as a teachable civics moment and take a stand for free speech. But as they have since Porter closed PCHS illegally, board members remain virtually silent.

Last week I emailed all five of them — President Fonner, Vice President Brian Castilow, and board members Jimmy Glasscock, Christine Mitchell and Christine Nice — to ask what they think about this situation.

Only two members replied, and none of them answered the questions I asked. Fonner said only that “I will look into this.” Castilow sent what looks like a canned response: “This will serve as an acknowledgement that your email has been received. No additional comments can be made until I consult with legal counsel and the [West Virginia] Department of Education.”

No board members answered follow-up emails, and the topic is not on the agenda for the next board meeting, which is at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

The board has been governing with a determined lack of transparency since PCHS was closed. Now the members are adding another affront to democracy by letting the county school system arbitrarily censor an entire community the board was elected to represent.