Morning Wire - Fired Over Johnny The Walrus?

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

As students go back to school, the issue of “banned books” is once again in the headlines. One Oregon social worker found himself out of a job because of his book display – which included Matt Walsh’s “Johnny the Walrus.” Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3065- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:ZocDoc - Find and book high-quality, in-network doctors without the phone tag. Visit https://Zocdoc.com/WIRE to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and your dinner is whatever is open. Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise, we're here for it. As students go back to school, the issue of banned books is once again in the headlines. While pop star Dua Lipa has recently launched her own band Books display that includes some widely available books, one Oregon social worker found himself out of a job because of his own book display, which included Matt Walsh's Johnny the Walrus.

In this episode, we talk with Alliance Defending Freedom's Tyson Langhofer about the case of Rod Tice, who found himself in hot water over three children's books that only encouraged children to accept how they were born. I'm Daily Wire, Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Hal. This is a Legal Wire edition of Morning Wire. There are certain phone calls that somehow stay on the to-do list. The dentist, the annual checkup, finding a new doctor after you move or change insurance. You keep thinking, I'll call tomorrow. Then tomorrow becomes next week. And when you finally call, you get a voicemail, a phone tag, or an appointment three months from now. There has to be an easier

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Find and book the right doctor with ZockDococ. Head to Zocdoc.com slash wire to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's ZOCDOC.com slash wire. Joining us now to discuss the Oregon book-banning cases, Tyson-Langhofer of Alliance Defending Freedom. Welcome on, Tyson. Hey, thanks so much for having me.

So we've been covering, you know, the banned books debate as it's sort of flared up in the past. It goes away. it comes back. But now that the new school year has started, we're starting to see this become an issue again. We've seen some headlines recently about this. We wanted to look at this really interesting case

that actually relates directly to us here at the Daily Wire. First, what exactly is this case of this fired social worker about? Sure. So Rod Tice was an education specialist and a licensed clinical social worker for over 17 years at the Intermountain Education, service district. And he gave testing to students who were struggling and so forth. And he had a great career that his colleagues loved him. He loved his job, did a great job. The issue arose when he decided

to display three different books. He is he and she is she by Ryan and Bethany Bomberder. And then Johnny the Walrus by a guy you might be familiar with Matt Walsh. Hey, I've heard of him. Yeah, may have heard of him. So Rod displayed those books as decoration in his office. All you could see was just the covers. He never used them in his work, never used them with students. And those messages are simple. Like boys are boys, girls are girls, and every student should love how they were made. So how exactly did this turn into Rod getting into trouble? You know, he displayed the Johnny the Walrus book for more than two years, not a single complaint from a student, a parent, teacher, but after he began displaying the he is he and she is she books, a single teacher took offense to

the covers of the books, did some research on what the book says. and complained. The district unfortunately ran with that, and they said that the books actually were a bias incident. They labeled a bias incident. They said it was a hostile expression of animus to promote a binary view of gender. Now, the problem with that is that the school's own books, like their science classes and their education classes, they promote an X, X, X, Y vision of biology. They promote a biological use of pronouns. So this wasn't about disruption or, you know, some variance from the curriculum. This was about shutting down a viewpoint that they don't like.

And to be clear, other teachers were able to freely decorate their offices however they wanted, correct? Absolutely. Intermating was very clear that every teacher employee has the right to decorate their classrooms and their offices. Whatever way they want, they don't have to have prior permission. Many other teachers had, you know, BOM flags, had LGBT flags. They had pro-union material. They had a lot of family photos and other material. In fact, many of them displayed books. And many of those books weren't even age-appropriate for the middle school level,

yet they were allowed to continue to allow to display those books. So he's ordered to remove these books. He files a lawsuit. Your team gets involved. And then there's apparently some sort of setup that triggered his firing. Can you unpack that part for us? Sure. It's sort of a crazy set of facts.

So after the initial teacher complained, the school ordered him to remove the books. We then filed a lawsuit on behalf of Rod, and the district court actually ruled in Rod's favor and said that Rod could display the books when the students that he was serving were not present. So in other words, when he wasn't testing students in his office, he could display them, he had to remove them while he was serving them. So beginning of the next school year, Rod puts the books back up. They're actually students aren't even back in school yet, but the sixth grade students are visiting along. with some eighth grade, eighth grade ambassadors. Four eighth graders show up in Rod's door, and they demand to read the books. Rod asked them, who are you?

What are you doing? Why, you know, are you supposed to be in class? They said, no, we're not in class. We just want to see these books. So they grab the books. They start reading them. And the teacher, who had already filed two different complaints against Rod, happens to walk by with a camera at the time and records these students reading the books.

She then files a complaint the next day, and the school used that. to terminate Rod's employment. All right. So clearly a setup by this teacher who's been targeting him from the beginning. This came to the Ninth Circuit just last month, as I understand it. What happened there?

How did it rule? So in a two-to-one decision, the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the school, and they ruled essentially that because Rod was a public school employee and students could see the books, that the decorations actually counted as government speech,

which fell outside the protection of the first. First Amendment. Now, we think that's wrong and really out of step with the Supreme Court's decision in 2022 in the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case. And in that case, the court rejected the idea that everything an employee does within view of students is automatically government speech. And the dissent in the Ninth Circuit recognized this. He really put it plainly. He said that Rod's books were his personal expression. They're no different from the pride flags or the BLM posters that his clugs were allowed to display. And there was no evidence of any disruption.

In the dissenting judge's case, this isn't a hard case. So the majority rules against him. What are the implications of this ruling? Well, we think it's pretty broad implications. The Kennedy decision was very clear that teachers don't shed their constitutional rights when they are on campus just because students are seeing them when they're speaking. And so we're concerned that this decision really undermines the Kennedy decision and would essentially, you know, allow the school to say that anything a teacher says while at school is automatically government speech and they now no longer have any First Amendment rights.

And this now also includes simply the books that they read. Yeah, anything displayed in your office. In fact, you know, if, and what this allows the school to do is it would allow one, the school to allow one teacher to wear a pen supporting a certain position, but deny another teacher. the right to wear a pen supporting the opposite position. And we think that's wrong both as a First Amendment, but also, you know, it really sends the wrong message to students because it makes it seem as that every adult at the school holds the same opinion on these issues, and that's just not the case. Right. I think it's pretty alarming from a parent's perspective.

What's next for this particular case? Well, we have some options. We can either appeal to the entire Ninth Circuit, take it on Bonk, or we could appeal it straight to the Supreme Court, and we're still weighing our options here. You know, I mean, Rod treated every student with kindness, with dignity and respect, and we're simply asking that he'd be allowed to do what every other teacher's allowed to do, decorate his offices with kids affirming material, and we want him to get his job back. This is really a chilling message to not just employees, but students and parents,

So we'll definitely keep a close eye on this case. Tyson, thank you so much for coming on. Hey, thanks so much for having me. That was ADF's Tyson Langhofer, and this has been a Legal Wire edition of Morning Wire.