Court Opinion

ID: 9629294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:40:05.240794+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:17.440758
License: Public Domain

COOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
“This is a case about nothing.”1 The majority burdens a federal district judge with a full-blown trial to determine whether to award the plaintiff a single dollar if a policy no longer in effect was unconstitutional despite never being enforced against the plaintiff. I cannot join an opinion that calls for such an exercise.
I note at the outset that the defendant here is the school district. It is not the high school code of conduct, the high school, or any particular administrator. I note further that the plaintiff in this case chose caution and remained silent rather than risk discipline for engaging in protected activity. As much as he (and the attorneys driving this litigation) might wish to keep the facial challenge to the 2004-05 code of conduct alive, the fact remains that they have already won that challenge when they forced the district, under court supervision, to change its policy. All that remains is an as-applied pre-enforcement challenge for nominal damages based on Morrison’s choice to chill his own speech based on his perception that he would be disciplined for speaking.
But whether he would have been, we can only speculate. And to avoid allowing standing based on guesswork, we require an imminent threat of prosecution and an actual intention to violate the policy at issue. See, e.g., Norton v. Ashcroft, 298 F.3d 547, 554 (6th Cir.2002); NRA of Am. v. Magaw, 132 F.3d 272, 285 (6th Cir.1997). But the school district’s — again, the actual defendant here — former discipline policy regarding instances of harassment or discrimination states that it “shall not be interpreted as applying to speech otherwise protected under the state or federal constitutions where the speech does not otherwise materially or substantially disrupt the educational process.” I see no evidence in the record that the school district would have punished him for protected speech in violation of its own policy. We cannot find a school district constitutionally liable for chilling student speech every time a student chooses caution over risking possible discipline.
Nor do I see how nominal damages would redress an injury of “past chill.” Nominal damages is, as Morrison’s counsel discussed at oral argument, a vehicle for a declaratory judgment. See Utah Animal Rights Coal. v. Salt Lake City Corp., 371 F.3d 1248, 1265 (10th Cir.2004) (McConnell, J., concurring). While we may have allowed a nominal-damage claim to go forward in an otherwise-moot case, see Murray v. Bd. of Trs., 659 F.2d 77, 79 (6th Cir.1981), we are not required to relax the basic standing requirement that the relief sought must redress the injury that occurred. And nominal damages based on a regime no longer in existence has no effect on the parties’ legal rights. See Utah Animal Rights Coal., 371 F.3d at 1264.
This case should be over. The school district has, at the behest of the plaintiffs and intervenors, adopted a policy that properly balances the district’s duty to protect openly gay and lesbian students with the important First Amendment right of allowing students to speak their minds. Keeping this case alive for a determination on the constitutionality of an obsolete code of conduct in the hope of awarding the plaintiff a single dollar vindicates no interest and trivializes the important business *508of the federal courts in protecting actual constitutional violations. My colleagues on the panel having seen the matter differently, I respectfully dissent.

. Husain v. Springer, 494 F.3d 108, 136 (2d Cir.2007) (Jacobs, C.J., dissenting).