A judge has ruled against the family of a 7-year-old girl who was severely punished for scribbling “all lives matter” on a card she gave to a black friend.
The girl, identified only as “BB” in court documents, gave the drawing to a friend after watching a documentary about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. She also drew circular shapes in different colors that were supposed to represent her “racially mixed” group of friends, the court said. San Francisco Chronicle.
“Elementary schools are not markets of ideas.”
Her friend, known in court documents as “MC,” brought the photo home to her parents, who were outraged by it and called on the school to take action.
School officials punished the girl for what they deemed a racist remark, forcing her to apologise to her friends and teachers in the schoolyard, and banning her from drawing and going to recess for two weeks.
The girl’s mother only found out about the incident a year later.
“I was immediately angry. I didn’t know what was happening. I just knew something was fundamentally wrong,” BB’s mother, Chelsea Boyle, said. interview With Fox News.
“My daughter’s rights were taken away and I was just starting to look into what compulsory speech was. I didn’t know what it was until I spoke to an attorney,” she added.
Boyle then filed a lawsuit against the Capistrano Unified School District.
Central District Court Judge David Carter sided with the girl’s family, saying she had no First Amendment rights at the elementary school.
“Students have a right to be free from derogatory remarks about their race while at school,” Carter wrote.
“Elementary schools are not marketplaces of ideas,” he continued, “so the downsides of censoring speech there are less significant than in high schools, where students are approaching voting age and controversial comments can spark fruitful conversation.”
The case will now go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
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