David Buren Wilson was elected a member of the Houston Community College System's board in 2013 who was censured for repeated incidences of what other members of the Board of Trustees deemed to be behavior that was not becoming of an elected official or beneficial to the HCC system.[1] Wilson filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas claiming that the censure was an offense to his First Amendment rights.[2]
In March 2019, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt dismissed Wilson's complaint, finding that no right was violated so no injury was suffered.[3] In April 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, reversed, with U.S. Circuit Judge W. Eugene Davis writing for the unanimous panel that Wilson had suffered "mental anguish" and criticizing the lower court for using out of circuit precedent.[4] The Fifth Circuit then deadlocked 8-8 on whether to rehear en banc, with Circuit Judges Edith Jones and James C. Ho both writing dissents criticizing the panel for creating a circuit split.[5]
On March 24, 2022, the Supreme Court announced judgment in favor of the community college, unanimously voting to reverse the circuit court.[8] Writing for the Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch found that Wilson's First Amendment rights were not violated by his fellow board members' censure of him because the censure did not result in any hindrance of his ability to exercise his free speech in his capacity as an elected official and member of the public. The opinion cites the fact that the use of censure by elected bodies to address the behavior and actions of their members is a practice with a long history in the United States, and it also states that the censure itself constitutes an exercise of First Amendment rights by Wilson's colleagues on the board who voted to reprimand him.[9]
