Posted on 09/13/2002 10:16:48 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Just before the trial was to begin over a teenager who was suspended from high school for wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of the Confederate flag, lawyers told the court they were about to settle the case.
An order filed Sept. 10 in U.S. District Court in Lexington revealed the settlement. Lawyers would not discuss details, but said it should be made final within 30 days.
"I don't want to upset any apple carts," explained attorney Kirk David Lyons of the Southern Legal Resource Center in North Carolina, a nonprofit group devoted to protecting the civil rights of people involved in Southern-heritage issues.
He represents Timothy Castorina, who was the only remaining plaintiff in the First Amendment lawsuit. Initially, his friend Tiffany Dargavell was also a party, but she dropped out of the fight after the suit was dismissed and before it was reinstated by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Castorina and Dargavell wore "Southern Thunder" T-shirts to Madison Central High School Sept. 17, 1997, to commemorate what would have been Hank Williams Sr.'s 74th birthday. The school's principal at the time, William Fultz, ordered the pair to turn the shirts inside out or change. The flag image, Fultz said, violated the school dress code that prohibited anything with an "illegal, immoral or racist implication."
Castorina, then a junior, and Dargavell, a freshman, refused to cooperate, and their parents took an equally stubborn line, saying black students wore Malcolm X shirts and were never ordered to change. The students were suspended for three days and returned to school in the same shirts, prompting a second suspension from which they never returned. Instead, they were home-schooled.
During its first go-round in U.S. District Court, Judge Henry Wilhoit Jr. ruled that T-shirts were not a form of speech and threw out the case. But a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit found he had erred and ordered a trial held.
According to documents in the court record, Madison Central was concerned about the Confederate flag, Malcolm X and many other T-shirts whose messages could offend. The school suffered from racial strife, according to Fultz and other administrators, and the trouble manifested itself in racist graffiti and three fights.
Castorina and Dargavell, however, denied that the school was marred by racial strife. In a sworn statement, Castorina said he suspected such claims were "a deliberate attempt on the part of the administration to make race relations appear worse then they were."
Previous
Federal appeals panel reinstates student's suit over suspension for Rebel flag shirt
Judges say school’s enforcement of dress code policy ‘gives the appearance of a targeted ban.’ 03.13.01
Related
Georgia school district's anti-Confederate symbol policy stands for now
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Probably the best decision to come out of this yet.
During its first go-round in U.S. District Court, Judge Henry Wilhoit Jr. ruled that T-shirts were not a form of speech and threw out the case.
Let me get this straight, Burning the US flag is a form of free-speech. Nude dancing and pornography are considered free-speech. Promoting gay/lesbian relations and education in our schools is free-speech. Requiring the Koran and Islam to be taught in school is considered free-speech.
But wearing the confederate flag, promoting the Boy Scouts, teaching the Bible, or saying a Christian prayer is not?
How is pimping girls better than selling someone on the block? That was a common practice in the so-called CSA.
Walt
This article is giving free publicity to Mr. Lyons (a self-proclaimed white seperatist), who apparently has added the David to his name.
Kirk Lyons represented Andre Strassmeir, a German national, who was head of security at racist camp at Elohmin City. On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, Lyons' office received phone calls from one, Tim McVeigh; no one is quite 'sure' how he got the phone number. Regardless of the merits of this particular case, Mr. Lyons has an agenda that the AP was too lazy to mention. Many believe that Andre Strassmeir was a government mole, brought in from overseas to keep an eye on the US "far right." (Also see the case of the Arizona Vipers, 1995-96.)
There is a lot more to this Lyons character (he worked with ultra-leftist Ramsey Clark on the Branch Davidian lawsuit against the government) but I suggest a Google search, "Kirk Lyons Andre Strassmeir" as a start. But anytime I see Lyons name next to anything I feel a little sick.
Maybe/Maybe Not! The article was intended to be about protecting the CBF, not Lyons. I know Lyons is a controversial figure. Care to comment on his "motive" for defending this case?
Did you mean the case is giving free publicity to Lyons, rather than the article?
The 6th Circuit panel ruled that the actions of Madison County High School officials gave "the
appearance of a targeted ban" because other students were allowed to wear clothing with the
"X" symbol.
That should be enough to decide the verdict.
You give idiocy too much credit.
These administrators know what they
are going. It is blatant discrimination
and everyone knows.
I didn't endorse or condone Malcolm X's pimping. I asked how that was worse than selling people on the block as chattel slaves. Your dishonesty s showing.
Walt
Mahon also admits his close friendship with German soldier Andreas Strassmeir, whom Tim McVeigh telephoned at Elohim City before the Oklahoma City bombing. It is Mahon and Strassmeir who Carol Howe, the "key" informant for the FBI and ATF at Elohim City, insists are the prime suspects in the OKC bombing. Strassmeir, who was living in the U.S. illegally, was spirited out of the U.S. through Mexico several months after the bombing by attorney Kirk Lyons, a legal activist for racists and militant national socialists. On July 13, 1997 the Dublin Sunday Times reported that Strassmeir had moved to Dublin and was associating with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA. Earlier, informant Carol Howe had reported that Strassmeir had received detonators for the OKC explosive charges from his IRA blasting buddies. Completely independent of Howe, federal informant Cary Gagan had stated (in July of 1995) that he had met in Mexico City with his Middle Eastern bombing co-conspirators — and a "former" member of the IRA who was providing expertise and detonators for the planned bombing operations in the U.S.
My ancestors fought in the Army of Northern Virginia and I support Confederate preservation and any iconoclast who will take on Lincoln, but Lyons is a huckster and should be jettisoned from the cause.
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