In a case that could impact students across the nation, the Johnston Community School District student’s filing recounted that just two days before her suspension, free speech rights in school were discussed. However, when she chose to wear her pro-Second Amendment shirt, teacher Thomas Griffin “removed her from class and suspended her.”
He claimed her expression was “inappropriate” in his classroom. So much for freedom of speech that is unapproved by those in power.
Griffin taught his students that they do have some constitutional rights to free speech in the classroom, but those liberties are extremely limited. Further, he said that the teacher — himself, of course — is the final arbiter of what is allowable speech on school property.
With the filing of her lawsuit, that idea will be seriously challenged.
The teacher further told students that, concerning clothing, he would not permit them to wear anything showing guns, alcohol, or other “inappropriate material.”
The student strongly disagreed, and two days later she decided to test Griffin’s definition of free speech. On Sept. 1, 2022, the girl entered her high school government class with a shirt that read ‘What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you not understand?”
Below the caption was a depiction of a rifle. The shirt had been worn to school several times before with zero incidents.
No matter, as that apparently was too much for Griffin. As a civics teacher he knew very well that the shirt quoted the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, but he asserted the clothing was in violation of the school’s dress code.
The student was told that her shirt caused a disruption in her classroom, even though the only noticeable disruption was due to Griffin’s taking offense to her attire. She responded that she had a constitutional right to wear the shirt, which of course quoted the actual Constitution.
The offending student was immediately removed from the classroom and sent to the administration to be dealt with. She was reportedly informed that her ideas concerning the First Amendment were wrong and that the administration would back the offended instructor.
He was right.
The student was given the choice to return to her government class if she agreed to change her shirt, but she refused. Then she was suspended from school.
However, her legal filing asserts that Johnston Community School District Superintendent Laura Kacer called her mom, Janet Bristow, that evening to apologize. Shortly after that call, an email came from Chris Billings, the district’s Executive Director of School Leadership.
According to her attorney, Alan Ostergren, the communication stated that Billings now understood “that this is considered political speech.”
Bristow quite reasonably asked for Griffin to apologize to her daughter in class. After all, it was he who created the scene in front of her peers and sent her to the office for discipline. She requested that he inform his students that he was wrong about her shirt not showing constitutionally protected speech.
However, Ostergren noted that Griffin did not apologize or issue a corrective statement. Further, the suspension remains in the student’s file despite apologies from the administration.
The student’s attorney asserts that the school district’s response contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark Tinker v. Des Moines decision during the Vietnam War. In that case, high school student Mary Beth Tinker wore a black armband to class to protest the war and was disciplined.
She sued, and the high court ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Exceptions are made if the speech leads to “substantial disruption, promotes illegal conduct, or is lewd, indecent, or vulgar.”
Promoting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, of course, is none of these things.
