First Amendment

A Missouri School District Censored a Parent's Negative Facebook Emoji Because It Was 'Upsetting'

Annie Palmer was banned from the district's Facebook page for expressing her displeasure at the hiring of a new elementary school principal.

Jacob Sullum | 10.8.2026 2:25 PM

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(Liberty Justice Center/Arseniukoleksii/Dreamstime)

Last April, Missouri's Kearney School District (KSD) announced that it had hired a new principal to run Southview Elementary School: Ali Stewart, who had been the district's director of curriculum and instruction since 2023. Annie Palmer, a KSD parent and former KSD teacher who had worked with Stewart, did not think she was a good choice for that job. When Palmer saw the announcement on the school district's Facebook page, she expressed her displeasure with a thumbs-down emoji.

Or maybe it was a "sad-face" emoji, as Ray Weikal, the school district's director of communications and community relations, later described it in an email to KSD Superintendent Emily Miller. We can't say for sure, because Weikal deleted Palmer's response. He also banned her from the KSD Facebook page, seemingly oblivious to the First Amendment implications of that decision.

Timothy Snowball, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center's PARENTS Intitiative, highlights those implications in a letter he sent Miller on Wednesday. "Government officials violate the First Amendment when they restrict constituents' access to official social media accounts" in response to opinions that offend them, he writes. He adds that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which includes Missouri, "has also acknowledged that blocking a constituent from a government-operated social media page based on the viewpoint of their expression is unconstitutional."

That apparently was news to Weikal, who did not hesitate to censor Palmer and punish her for expressing a dissenting view. "I........

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