Press Release: Griswold v. Driscoll

Questions may be directed to:

Norman S. Zalkind

Malick W. Ghachem

Zalkind, Rodriguez, Lunt & Duncan

mghachem@zrld.com

Telephone (617) 742-6020

Harvey A. Silverglate

has@HarveySilverglate.com

Telephone (617) 661-9156

Plaintiffs’ Statement concerning Theodore Griswold et al. v. David P. Driscoll et al.

For Immediate Release

October 27, 2005

            Yesterday, a group of plaintiffs including a Massachusetts high school student, two Massachusetts public high school teachers, and the nonprofit Assembly of Turkish American Associations filed a public interest complaint in federal court in Boston seeking constitutional relief against the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education and other state defendants. Only the court of history can decide the historical controversy that underlies this case.  The lawsuit filed yesterday does not take a position on that controversy.  The plaintiffs understand and appreciate the gravity of the historical debate over what happened in eastern Anatolia in 1915-17.  The debate as to how to characterize the events of those years, and in particular how to characterize the deaths of a very large number of Ottoman Armenians, is a longstanding and heated one.

            But the plaintiffs also believe that there are serious constitutional principles at stake in this case.  The plaintiffs believe that the defendants violated the First Amendment when they decided, under pressure from state politicians and interest groups, to censor one side of this contentious historical debate after earlier concluding that the censored materials were educationally suitable and should be made available to teachers and students in the Massachusetts secondary school system. This reversal came as a result of political pressure placed on educational authorities, rather than on the basis of either pedagogical or historical considerations.

The only matter that is at issue in this case is whether the suppression of politically disfavored materials from “The Massachusetts Guide to Choosing and Using Curricular Materials on Genocide and Human Rights Issues” infringes upon the federal constitutional rights of teachers and students to inquire, teach, and learn free from viewpoint discrimination unrelated to educational suitability.

                                                            E N D