Of course — of course! — it's California:
JUST IN: California judge rules that teachers were right to punish a 7-year-old girl who wrote ‘ANY LIFE' over a Black Lives Matter drawing because ‘she's too young to have First Amendment rights.'
The first grader at Viejo Elementary in Orange County was banned from recess and drawing pictures after she added the words "any life" below "Black Lives Matter" on a picture she drew and gave to a black friend
School principal Jesus Becerra told B.B. her drawing was inappropriate and racist.
In addition to banning her from recess and from drawing pictures, the principal "made her publicly apologize" for the high crime of, you know, saying that every life matters.
Yes, just the sort of thing you want to force your kid to apologize for!
It is absurd, of course, to suggest that a child does not have First Amendment rights in a public school setting. This isn't just bad philosophy, it's bad U.S. legal history. The Supreme Court already ruled on this all the way back in 1969:
[In the case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the] court's 7 - 2 decision in favor of the students held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. ...
The Court held that for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint," that the conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school."
Needless to say, writing "every life [matters]" clearly does not meet that very high threshold. Obviously.
The case isn't over. From the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the family in court:
An elementary school is not a totalitarian environment in which students have no rights. The district court was wrong to claim otherwise and set a dangerous precedent, totally stripping elementary school students of their First Amendment rights.
Represented by Pacific Legal Foundation at no charge, B.B. and her mother are fighting back. They've asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the absurd lower court ruling and restore the free speech rights of all students, including first-graders.
Let's hope the appeals court has more good sense (and more respect for SCOTUS precedent) than this very California judge.
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