What happened
The Fourth Circuit on Tuesday reopened significant parts of a lawsuit challenging a South Carolina budget proviso that restricts state-funded instruction on certain race-related concepts, ruling that the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and author Ibram X. Kendi adequately alleged standing for key claims while sending other standing questions back to the district court.
In a published opinion by Judge G. Steven Agee, joined by Judges Paul V. Niemeyer and Roger L. Gregory, the panel affirmed in part, reversed in part and vacated in part a South Carolina federal judge's dismissal of the case for lack of Article III standing. The ruling revives, at least procedurally, claims tied to South Carolina's removal of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course code and Lexington County School District Three's removal of Kendi's book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You from school libraries.
The case targets a South Carolina budget provision that the opinion says bars public schools from using state funds to teach various concepts related to race and sex. Students, the SC NAACP and Kendi alleged that the proviso contributed to the state's decision not to offer AP African American Studies and to District Three's removal of Stamped, while also asserting constitutional vagueness and equal protection theories.
The Fourth Circuit did not decide whether the proviso, the course-code decision or the book removal violated the Constitution. Instead, the panel faulted the district court's standing analysis, including its treatment of the SC NAACP's representational-standing theory and Kendi's viewpoint-discrimination claim. The court said Kendi's allegations did not leave the district's educational-suitability explanation unchallenged and that the government-speech argument belongs at the merits stage, not as a standing bar.
On the student claims, the panel drew narrower lines. It affirmed dismissal as to one student, J.S., because she had graduated, and affirmed dismissal of T.R.'s as-applied right-to-receive-information claim for lack of standing. But it held the SC NAACP had adequately alleged that at least one student member would have standing to sue in her own right, while leaving the other requirements for representational standing to the district court on remand.
The panel also vacated dismissal of the students' facial right-to-receive-information challenge, the plaintiffs' void-for-vagueness claim and their equal protection claims because the district court had not separately addressed standing for those claims. Quoting standing doctrine, the panel said, "Standing is not dispensed in gross."
The Fourth Circuit also vacated the denial of the plaintiffs' preliminary-injunction motion, explaining that because the district court dismissed for lack of standing, it had no occasion to reach the merits of that request. The case now returns to the District of South Carolina for further proceedings, including unresolved standing issues and, potentially, the defendants' merits arguments.