Margaret Russell spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle about a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by former San Francisco school board Vice President Alison Collins’ after she was demoted for tweets she posted in 2016 attacking Asian Americans.

“If she was saying this as a private citizen and they were trying to punish her, that would be a violation of the First Amendment. But she was a member of a governmental body,” Margaret Russell, a constitutional law professor at Santa Clara University, said Thursday. “They have a right to that point of view,” and as a school board member, Collins “has agreed to accept the consequences.”