Posted on 10/13/2009 12:28:37 PM PDT by motoman
A Christian middle-school student is suing his school district after a principal ordered him to remove a T-shirt bearing the message "Abortion is not health care" on the day of President Obama's speech to schoolchildren.
Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court against the West Shore School District in Lewisberry, Pa., Oct. 5 on behalf of a male, Christian middle-school student identified as E.B.
The boy's parents, identified as the Boyers, said they were concerned about the president's speech and the national health-care debate, including reported funding of abortion within proposed legislation.
"[T]he Boyers, like many others, felt that President Obama was bypassing them and speaking directly to their children without their permission," the complaint states. "… Like many others, the Boyers struggled with whether they should send their children to school on that day. E.B. attended school and decided to voice his religious viewpoint as it relates to the issue of abortion."
The boy wore the T-shirt to his classes at Crossroads Middle School and said he received no complaints until his fifth-period teacher ordered him to go to the principal's office to determine whether the shirt was "appropriate."
E.B. claims he was immediately told to remove his shirt "because it might insult somebody."
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I have been in a high school teaching for many days in the recent few years. I was speaking to the ideal of learning to say “highly structured classroom”.
There’s NO suggestion or hint in the First Amendment that the free speech parts of it apply in a classroom — sorry. Go read it sometime.
More correctly, there’s no hint that free speech provisions DON’T apply to the classroom in the constitution.
Here’s what Cornell Law School has to say on it, and it’s whack-job liberal up there in Ithaca, NY:
“The most basic component of freedom of expression is the right of freedom of speech. The right to freedom of speech allows individuals to express themselves without interference or constraint by the government. The Supreme Court requires the government to provide substantial justification for the interference with the right of free speech where it attempts to regulate the content of the speech. A less stringent test is applied for content-neutral legislation. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence. The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicate a message.”
Unless the shirt is going to ‘breach peace or cause violence’, then you are OK. It says nothing about WHERE you can speak. The classic test is ‘yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater’. Wearing a T-shirt about abortion doesn’t come near meeting that test.
The Principal is wrong here, period. Especially within a taxpayer-funded institution like a school.
WITHOUT reasonable, unfettered speech, you end up with public educational institutions that reflect a single, institutionally enforced ideological context.
Looks like 1A hasn’t done much to ameliorate this on most college campii. Cie la vie.
What does the First Amendment actually say and NOT that modern clap-trap?
Have you ever been an employee? Or been in the service?
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
There it is verbatim, minus ‘the claptrap’, which would be modern case law to others.
The Principal was wrong. Period. As written, you can actually shout ‘fire’ in a burning building, but that seemed recklessly dangerous and arbitrary.
To recap - the Principal was wrong, should apologize, and should know the law a bit better before he goes ordering students to ‘shed clothing’.
Congress did not make any law so abridging free speech. This was a Principal making a judgment he had ever necessity of office to make. The first necessity of learning is order. Only the Principal can make that decision, he or she is there, day after day and knows the students and the community in situ. It’s really not a reviewable decision. It’s like the judgment of s Ship’s Captain — the default assumption is the Captain’s judgment may not be reviewed, excepting the most egregious of occurrences and then only by fellow captains experienced and proven in the art of being the master of a ship.
The concept that the master of a school has full authority in the matter of maintaining good order and discipline was known and accepted by all until the socially deconstructionist 60’s.
You want free speech? Though experiment: Go to work tomorrow wearing a Button that say “F*k The Boss”. What will happen? Second experiment button says “I do not like my Boss”. What happens? Reasonable? Foreseeable?
In 1969, the Supreme Court took a wrong turn — they made the courts the decider of what was a “reasonable” judgment to maintain school discipline. What has happened in American schools since? Have they gotten better?
As for employees, most work in ‘at will’ environments, which means you don’t need a cause to fire them. That’s a balance against ‘popping off’.
As for the military, they are governed by the UCMJ, and while you have LIMITED constitutional rights, you fall under that area of legal jurisdiction.
“Do you think 1969 was a good year for real civil liberties....”
If 1969 was not a proud moment in our history for civil liberties, then 2009 is equally, if not more shameful in terms of the public school system’s attack on christian values.
Now is not the time to relinquish control of our children to the halls of liberalism in our public schools. The court system once corrected the wrongs committed against minorities. The courts can once again justly protect the rights of christian values in our public schools.
There is no logic whatsover in resigning oneself to a public school authority that supresses the values of christians while pushing a godless, morally relativistic agenda.
I don’t want the courts telling me what speech is allowed in my classrooms. I do not tell them what speech is allowed in their courtrooms, and I do know from at a number of personal experiences that judges hit hard and immediately on any breeches of what they consider proper speech, dress or decorum. The proper and serious level of decorum in a classroom has no less sanctity and importance than a courtroom.
Why don’t THEY respect Teachers and Principals to have the same responsible authority?
Christian values? Obama’s a Christian by his own sayso, and the main line Protestant sects are all gung ho over homosexual clergy and marriage and such. G-dly values we can agree on, but brand them with an establishment and we have gone astray because the establishments of men go astray.
Nor is disrespecting proper authority helpful. A Principal has the proper authority on his or her sayso to say that a particular way of expressing oneself, in speech, dress or behavior is disruptive and can not be allowed. To my understanding that proper authority is very broad and non-reviewable in particular cases. As a general policy one may appeal to the school board to have the policy or the Principal changed. But that ALONE is the proper level of review and the citizen’s check on an out of control district — by appeal to, election and recall of board members.
Individually a student has recourse for acts of criminality, or torts against the student — but the maintenance of order in a classroom within the a customary standards of the time is never a tort. Individually a student and the parents can chose to switch schools to move to another district, to homeschool. You are not without recourse against bad teaching in a district.
It’s hard to impossible, in my view, to justify undermining the proper authority of Principals and Teachers by the imposition of the threat of court review of any action they take that is meant in their professional opinion to improve the situation in the classroom, and which falls within general standards of the time.
Tell it to a judge.
The courts don’t appear to agree with your opinion that public schools have a right to total control over what can be said or expressed by students and teachers, after giving themselves complete latitude to spew their own biased message. If they simply would stick to the 3 R’s and stop pushing normalization of homosexuality, sex, revisionist history, and other moral relativistic garbage, they would’nt find themselves in court at every turn.
This goes beyond bad teaching. Our schools have crossed too many lines involving subjects that have nothing to do with the three R’s. And because they partake in these social engineering escapades, students and parents will respond in accordance with their free speech rights.
If you’re bothered by a kid wearing a pro-life t-shirt to school, then don’t defend renegade public school teachers and officials who abuse their authority with anti-christian tactics.
This is what you get when God, prayer, and Christianity are not only removed from our public schools, but attacked and repudidated as well by teachers and school officials - the vast majority of which have tilted far to the left during the last 30 years.
I look forward to many more of these lawsuits, wherever and whenever the need arises.
The courts that do not agree are all deconstructionist-era of law, a very sad era. What we also call politically-correct, or even Marxist.
For most years that we’ve had courts in the US and as a colony — that is over 300 years — my “opinion” was the rule. For fifty-sixty years now, we have courts that have swung into chaotic and tyrannical territory.
We’re a nation of laws, and respect for the law is first and foremost. Our military swears not to uphold the President, but the Constitution, for this very reason.
Respect is earned, not enforced. Judges have ‘contempt of court’ to compel ‘respect’. Principals, however, don’t.
There are more reasonable, constructive ways of compelling compliance with such things as moderating speech - a school debate on the matter. We fail to teach children how to create, support, and communicate a position anymore, which is why we are down to sloganeering.
If the school had a debate on the matter, and the debate were structured, then you could communicate that perhaps the issue is more complicated than what can be encapsulated in a T-shirt.
As an aside, the Principals are in a no-win situation. They don’t control their employees, because they are irretrievably unionized. They don’t have sway over students because there are parents that nearly ensure that many school-wide policies can’t be enforced.
This situation is precisely in that category. The parent ALLOWED the child to go to school with that shirt on. Fortunately, parents are still free to parent. A pity that more don’t actually avail themselves of that right and responsibility.
Some parents allow kids to go to school in all sorts of really atrocious dress — dress that is disrespectful, and disruptive. Those same parents have little or no regard for authority, and some few *want* their dear ones to draw all sorts of attention. I do not understand that, but I have seen it.
You say in one sentence “respect must be earned” and in the next you give and example of where respect is not “earned” but demanded.
It is the same thing in a school room. The need for society to insist that respect be given, no mater if it is earned. It does not matter if the Teacher or Principal is bad, even the worst teacher one might think of, because it is the teacher’s ideal role to teach and the necessary role to maintain the safety of every child in a classroom. Not even a Judge has such a burden of responsibility — there are bailiffs and other officers of the court there to maintain order. Moreover EVERYONE who has been through a courtroom experience well understands that order and quiet MUST be maintained. Why? Because of the plenary authority of a Judge in his courtroom to quickly and forcefully take whatever steps necessary to maintain order.
What does “plenary power” mean? According to one dictionary: “complete in every respect : absolute, unqualified”.
That is the ideal as well for a teacher in his or her classroom and for the Principal in the whole of school. It is still the ideal even though the courts of our perverted modern era of US law have ruled otherwise. It is the biggest reason the schools are chaos and children are not learning.
A Judge could order such a t-shirt removed. He has to make no excuses or explanations in so doing. Teachers and Principals need that same due regard, that same natural and rightful authority returned to them.
Eventually, judges have to show cause, else they are overturned on appeal. Judges are subject to review. Only SCOTUS has the ability to make it up as they go, and if you’ve read Mark Levin’s book, “Men in Black”, they often have.
Within education, the only entity with plenary power is the Union. That’s it. Teacher’s hands are tied. They have nearly zero options in terms of actually disciplinary tools.
Parents COULD be a source of plenary power for principals and teachers, but they choose not too. As such, the only practical source of plenary power is the union.
If you are proposing putting bailiffs and law enforcement in classrooms, I’m all for it. Currently, however, the law doesn’t really help either teachers or principals, just the unions. A single parent can trump that, make a stink, and get a perfectly good principal OR SUPERINTENDENT canned.
This is more often the case, unions and parents teaming up to can good teachers and administrators.
Check this case out. This is in my local district. Teacher was putting a kid at risk while publishing an underground school newspaper. This teacher, Kay Powers, was a leftwing, Abbie Hoffman type, and countered a direct order from the super to cease and desist. She, of course, didn’t.
Super responds by putting a camera in the classroom to document beyond all doubt that the teacher was in direct violation. Union had a cow. Got the teacher, who was fired, reinstated. She was allowed to retire.
The super got, for her trouble, death threats. She was forced to retire. By far the best super ever in the district’s history. Never mind that if it were my kid, I might have caved that teacher’s head in, and that many responsible parents felt that way.
Here’s one of the articles. There’s more stuff out there on this, but file this one under ‘Do your job and get fired in education’.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008031102_superintendent03.html
The Unions have a lot of power, it is not plenary, it is subject to challenge through process.
I have a brother who was a union VP and switched back into management where he uses his detailed knowledge of union rules and tactics to stymie and correct their abuses, using those processes.
When I speak to what the Teacher’s authority in a classroom is and call it plenary in regard to the management pf the students and others in classroom I speak to the old-school ways, and the ideal. Today’s environment is far from ideal, and the concern with how any action against a student will be viewed in a courtroom ends up the ability to ensure order in the classroom. Thus many of today’s classrooms operate close to the boundary of chaos. Lord of the Flies territory.
The courts have done this, no one should think well of those legal reasonings and perverse view of “civil liberty” because the fruit it bears is national ruination.
Agree.
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