When Jeff Sessions arrived at Woodlawn High School for a Wednesday morning press conference, Dr. Terrell E. Brown, the school’s principal, was waiting for him in the parking lot.

The press conference couldn’t be held on school grounds, he said — but Sessions was welcome to move to a parking lot across the street. Sessions’ campaign staffers begrudgingly acquiesced. “Well, that’ll make it part of the story,” one staffer muttered as they lugged the podium across the busy street.

The former U.S. attorney general and current U.S. Senate candidate was in Woodlawn to express his outrage over recent decisions by the Birmingham Board of Education and the Birmingham Housing Authority to cut ties with Church of the Highlands after founding pastor Chris Hodges “liked” several social media posts by the politically conservative group Turning Point USA.

“This is a matter of real importance,” Sessions said. “It deals concretely with the right of free speech and free expression of religious values and to be able to have independent ideas outside your work environment.”
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