The suspension of a 16-year-old boy for allegedly “making racially insensitive remarks that sparked class unrest” has launched a free speech debate that has drawn audiences beyond the North Carolina county.
Racially insensitive rhetoric: Referring to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens.”Invoking the term would lead to the beginning of a legal odyssey, still in its infancy, in the form of federal lawsuit Central Davidson High School Vice Principal Eric Anderson is believed to have violated Christian McGee’s free speech rights when he temporarily banned him from class over a controversy over offensive language.
Of course, what constitutes offensive speech depends on who is evaluating it. In April English class, McGee said he wanted to clarify a word: alien. “Like space aliens,” he asked, “or illegal aliens without green cards?” According to reports, a Hispanic student — another minor named in the lawsuit by the pseudonym “R.” – Joking that he would “kick” [McGhee’s] butt.
This exchange led to a meeting with Vice Chancellor Anderson. “Mr. Anderson later recalled [McGhee] That would be more “respectful” [McGhee] McGee’s complaint states that his question was directed to ‘those in need of green cards.'[McGhee] I have a good relationship with R. R. to express one’s feelings [McGhee] He did not ‘cry’ during his meeting with Anderson”—the principal allegedly claimed that R. did cry during this exchange—“nor did he feel ‘upset’ or ‘offended’ by the conversation. [McGhee’s] question. R. said, “If anyone is a racist, it’s [Mr. Anderson] Because he asked me why my Spanish scores were so low – this was obviously a reference to R.’s race.
McGee’s classmates received brief in-school suspensions, and McGee was banned from campus for three days. Under district policy, he was not allowed to appeal, and if the suspension lasted less than 10 days, he would lose avenues for appeal. While a three-day suspension doesn’t sound like the sky is falling, McGee’s lawsuit points out that he was hoping to earn an athletic scholarship to college and that scholarship may now be in jeopardy.
So, the question at hand is: If the facts are as McGee explains, did Anderson violate the 16-year-old’s First Amendment rights? In terms of case law, the answer is a little murkier than you might think. But it seems that vindication is still a possible outcome (at least in my mind, it’s a given).
Where the judges fell down may come down to rulings from the 1960s –Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District— in which the Supreme Court sided with two students who wore black armbands in public schools to protest the Vietnam War. “There is no doubt,” Justice Abe Fortas wrote for the majority, “that both students and teachers waived their constitutional rights to free speech or expression at the schoolhouse door.”
this Tinker The decision provides an exception: schools can indeed seek to deter and punish “actual or potentially disruptive behavior.” potentially As Vikram David Amar, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and Jason Mazzone, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, write in “ justice. In other words, under the decision, the destruction does not actually have to occur, just as the attempted murder does not, by definition, turn into actual murder. But just as governments have a vested interest in punishing attempted crimes, schools can also nip attempts at sabotage in the bud.
“However, all of this raises some questions Tinker Ammar and Mazzone write: “What if the possibility of destruction exists only because of the ignorance, misunderstanding, allergies, or idiosyncrasies of the people who heard it (even a significant number of people)? In this case Wouldn’t allowing schools to punish speakers be tantamount to vetoing questionable hecklers?
This seems particularly relevant here for several reasons. The first: If McGee’s account of his interaction with Anderson is true, then essentially Anderson was retroactively conjuring a disruption that, according to McGee and R., did not actually end in happens in any meaningful way. In a sense, the disturbance did occur and it was allegedly caused by those who inflicted the punishment rather than by those who were punished.
But the second question is more important: If McGee’s conduct—merely referring to “illegal aliens”—yes Isn’t it fair game for public schools to censor any controversial topic if it is found to have the potential to cause a disturbance? If “disruption” is defined as anything potentially offensive, then we’re in trouble, because the Venn diagram of “things we all agree on as a country” is essentially two lonely circles at this point. This is particularly difficult to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Tinkerwhich purportedly exists as a bulwark against state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination and censorship.
Equally unacceptable is the fact that until a few years ago, “illegal alien” was the official term used by the government to describe undocumented immigrants.The Library of Congress stopped using the term in 2016, President Joe Biden sign An executive order recommends that the federal government not use this descriptor in 2021.
Those who would prefer a less accusatory account to “illegal aliens” – and I myself fall into this camp – should also want to see McGee exonerated if his claims stand up to court scrutiny. Proved correct. Almost everything seems to be political these days, which means students with a more liberal vocabulary are likely to be the next to be suspended.
