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Doninger v. Niehoff

Parent who brought First Amendment action against school was not entitled to preliminary injunction voiding student election after daughter was deemed ineligible to run for class officer based on vulgar and misleading blog entry about upcoming school event; blog post created foreseeable risk of disruption at school, so that parent could not establish likelihood of success on merits as prerequisite to preliminary injunction.

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Argued: March 4, 2008

Before: SOTOMAYOR, LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judges, and PRESKA, District Judge.*fn1

Plaintiff-Appellant Lauren Doninger (“Doninger”) appeals from the August 31, 2007 order of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Kravitz, J.) denying her motion for a preliminary injunction. Doninger v. Niehoff, 514 F. Supp. 2d 199 (D. Conn. 2007). Doninger sued Defendants-Appellees Karissa Niehoff and Paula Schwartz, respectively the principal of Lewis Mills High School (“LMHS”) and the superintendent of the district in which LMHS is located, when her daughter, Avery Doninger (“Avery”), was disqualified from running for Senior Class Secretary after she posted a vulgar and misleading message about the supposed cancellation of an upcoming school event on an independently operated, publicly accessible web log (or “blog”). Doninger, alleging principally a violation of her daughter’s First Amendment rights, moved for a preliminary injunction voiding the election for Senior Class Secretary and ordering the school either to hold a new election in which Avery would be allowed to participate or to grant Avery the same title, honors, and obligations as the student elected to the position, including the privilege of speaking as a class officer at graduation. The district court denied the motion, concluding that Doninger had failed to show a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits. Because Avery’s blog post created a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption at LMHS, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion. We therefore affirm the denial of Doninger’s preliminary injunction motion.

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