A Kansas school board member tried to put pocket Constitutions in eighth graders' hands for National Constitution Day, today.
Superintendent Marty Kobza reversed course weeks after his own district accepted the donation.
Now three separate excuses later, nobody in Lansing can say why students are not allowed to carry the founding document in their backpacks.
Superintendent Marty Kobza Rejected a Donation the District Already Approved
Amy Cawvey is a former Lansing USD 469 board member and a current candidate for the Kansas State Board of Education.
She arranged for the 917 Society to donate pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution to eighth graders ahead of National Constitution Day, today September, 17.
The district agreed to accept the donation on August 28, 2026.
The constitutions arrived on September 4.
Cawvey publicly thanked the donors on September 8.
One day later, Superintendent Kobza reversed the decision and rejected the materials outright.
Board member Kirsten Workman said the whole episode was handled without "any regard to facts, existing policy, or putting students first."
Every Excuse Kobza Gave Fell Apart Under Scrutiny
Kobza's first excuse was that the 917 Society is a political organization.
That claim collapsed immediately – the 917 Society is a nonpartisan nonprofit whose entire mission is distributing free copies of the Constitution to students nationwide.
His second excuse pivoted to Moms for Liberty's political status, since the group had helped distribute the booklets.
His third excuse was that a post on Cawvey's campaign page mentioning the donation made it look like a district endorsement of her run for state school board.
Cawvey pushed back hard. "The district receives many donations, including from people in office, running for office and churches," she said. "Never has this been a problem until now."
Board member Jackie Kennedy raised an objection at the board level, and the district reversed its acceptance the very next day.
At the September 14 board meeting, a compromise donation was floated to salvage the program for students.
The motion failed to get a second. It went nowhere.
Board member Pete Im, an Army professor, tried to steer the conversation back toward the kids who never got their booklets.
Eighth graders in Lansing never received the very document their superintendent apparently could not justify rejecting.
Nobody on that board named a policy Kobza actually violated. They named politics.
Kobza Is Not the First Administrator To Fear a Pocket Constitution
This is not new. In 2017, a student at Pierce College in Los Angeles was blocked by campus police from handing out pocket Constitutions to fellow students on the school's quad.
He sued.
The University of Hawaii settled a nearly identical lawsuit after administrators stopped a student from distributing Constitutions during Free Speech Week.
The pattern is not subtle. Every time it happens, the excuse changes and the outcome is the same: bureaucrats blocking a founding document from the people it was written to protect.
The Supreme Court settled the underlying legal question decades ago. Tinker v. Des Moines established that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
A pocket Constitution is not a weapon, a vape, or a cell phone banned under a dress code. It is core protected speech, and courts have sided with students almost every single time an administrator tried to argue otherwise.
Kobza had the legal history sitting in front of him and ignored it anyway.
FIRE and similar civil liberties groups have collected settlements in nearly every one of these cases, and Kobza just handed them a file with his name already on it. Three shifting excuses and zero cited policy violations is not a legal defense. It is an admission that this was never actually about policy.
What Kobza Is Really Protecting Is His Own Discomfort
Kobza was never protecting Lansing students from indoctrination. He was protecting himself from a former board member with the nerve to run for higher office and hand kids a Constitution while she did it.
That is not a policy violation. That is a superintendent picking a fight with the founding document because a woman he does not like was standing next to it.
Three excuses in ten days is not caution. It is a man scrambling to justify a decision he made for reasons he will not say out loud.
Lansing parents do not need Kobza's permission to teach their kids what is in that booklet. They can buy their own copies for a few dollars and hand them out at the kitchen table, no superintendent required.
But on Constitution Day itself, eighth graders in Kansas watched the adults in charge of their education treat the Constitution as too controversial to touch.
Sources:
- Chase Spears, "Lansing, KS School District Bans Pocket Constitutions for National Constitution Day," RedState, September 17, 2026.
- "LA college sued by student for allegedly curbing his free speech rights," Fox News, March 29, 2017.
- "U. of Hawaii Settles Lawsuit Over Handing Out Constitutions," Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), 2015.
- "Facts and Case Summary – Tinker v. Des Moines," United States Courts.