Lower court let school punish kids for their self-expression
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being challenged to confirm that children in America have constitutional rights, too.
This after a lower court allowed a school unfettered permission to punish kids for their self-expression.
“School administrators are state actors who wield extraordinary power over the families of more than 65 million children attending public schools. They must not be allowed to punish children on a whim whenever their own hypersensitive political views are offended,” explained Dean McGee, a lawyer at the Liberty Justice Center.
The organization has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in case on behalf of student B.B.
“B.B. was in first grade when her California school introduced her to ‘Black Lives Matter’ – a phrase rooted in the complex, controversial topic of racial discrimination in American policing. Empathizing with a classmate, B.B. drew a picture of their group with the phrase ‘Black Lives Mater’ [sic], adding ‘any life’ below it,” the legal team explained.
“Conflating the first grader’s innocent use of ‘any life’ with the politicized phrase ‘All Lives Matter,’ school administrators forced B.B. to publicly apologize, prohibited her from drawing at school, and forced her to sit on the bleachers during recess for weeks. The school never told B.B.’s family about the punishments. When they eventually learned what had happened from another parent over a year later, B.B.’s family sued the school for violating her First Amendment rights.”
The lower court dismissed the case, essentially depriving students of that age of constitutional rights.
The Liberty Justice Center’s filing warns “students’ constitutional rights are threatened by near-total deference to school administrators, highlighting the harm that can arise from suspensions, public shaming, and other harsh disciplinary methods.”
WND had reported when David Carter, a district judge, who ruled against students’ rights.
The judge noted the student was “too young to have First Amendment rights.”
The girl’s family filed a lawsuit last year against the Capistrano Unified School District over the deprivation of rights.
They charged, “Students have the right to be free from speech that denigrates their race while at school” and that the girl was not protected by the First Amendment because of her age.
Carter had claimed, “An elementary school … is not a marketplace of ideas… Thus, the downsides of regulating speech there is not as significant as it is in high schools, where students are approaching voting age and controversial speech could spark conducive conversation.”
The report explained B.B. had given the image to a friend, who took it home, and that friend’s parents were offended by the child’s drawing. They complained to the school and demanded action.
Lawyer Caleb Trotter, on behalf of the student, said, “If that view is allowed to survive and spread, the speech rights of countless elementary students around the country could be at risk. That was what really concerned me.”
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