Augusta, ME — A Maine school board spent a year using vague, inconsistent policies to silence a parent who dared to criticize it.

Yesterday, a federal court told them to stop.

U.S. District Judge Stacey D. Neumann issued the ruling last night in Blanchard v. Augusta Board of Education, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Augusta resident Nicholas “Corn Pop” Blanchard by the Institute for Free Speech. The judge’s order forbids the Augusta Board of Education from enforcing key provisions of its public comment policy barring “gossip,” “abusive” language, and “vulgar” language, ruling that each constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination or is impermissibly vague. The court also blocked the policy’s sweeping ban on “complaints or allegations” about school employees in its entirety, finding its terms too subjective and inconsistently applied to survive constitutional scrutiny.

Board members used those provisions to silence citizens who criticized the board and its employees.

Over the course of 2025, the board’s Chair, Martha Witham, repeatedly interrupted Blanchard’s public comments—censoring him, among other things, for criticizing board members’ attendance and voting records, discussing a petition to fire a school administrator, and challenging the board’s progressive gender identity policies—while allowing speakers who praised the board to speak without interruption. The court’s ruling leaves intact only the board’s prohibition on defamatory statements, which it construed as limited to the narrow legal category of unprotected slander.

The ruling applies core First Amendment principles to the school board meeting context, reaffirming that, once a board opens its meetings for public comment, it cannot suppress speech simply because officials find it offensive, vulgar, or critical.

Judge Neumann found that the board’s nebulous policies left speakers guessing about what speech was allowed while granting the board chair unchecked discretion to silence views she disliked—a combination the court deemed incompatible with the First Amendment.

“This ruling is a victory for every citizen who wants to speak honestly and critically to their elected officials,” said Institute for Free Speech attorney Nathan Ristuccia, lead litigator in the case. “When a government uses vague, standardless rules to silence the speakers it dislikes, courts rightly must step in to protect fundamental rights.” Local counsel David Gordon and Stephen C. Smith assisted the Institute in defending the First Amendment.

To read the court’s order in Blanchard v. Augusta Board of Education, click here. To visit our case page, click here.

About the Institute for Free Speech

The Institute for Free Speech promotes and defends the political speech rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government guaranteed by the First Amendment.