February 2002, Headlines

 

Crosbyton student claims 1st Amendment rights violated

Lawsuit says superintendent forbid him from writing letters to the editor of the News & Chronicle

By Pauline Word
Messenger Editor

CROSBYTON — A 16-year-old high school student is suing his superintendent and school district claiming they violated his First Amendment rights by telling him he could not write any more letters to the editor of the Crosby County News & Chronicle.

Justin Latimer, a sophomore at Crosbyton High School, and his parents, Samuel C. and Mary A. Latimer, Jan. 25 sued superintendent Larry Morris and the Crosbyton Consolidated Independent School District in federal court in Lubbock claiming they violated his First and 14th amendment rights last September.

The filing says that on Sept. 21, the same day the News & Chronicle published a letter Latimer wrote, the student was called over the loudspeaker to come to the administration office where the superintendent and band director questioned him for 20 minutes about the letter.

In the letter, which did not mention any school official by name, Latimer wrote that he was “deeply saddened” that the Crosbyton High School Band, which he belongs to, was not allowed to play “Amazing Grace” at the Sept. 14 football game. Band members had agreed to learn and play the song as a tribute to the victims in the Sept. 11 attack on the United States only to have the band director cancel the performance the day before, according to the letter.

The lawsuit alleges that the superintendent told Latimer he could not write any more letters to the editor without first getting them approved by himself or the band director.

“We’re talking here a wholly private letter to the editor and the superintendent effectively presuming that he could dictate the content there,” said Stephen Crampton, of American Family Association Center for Law & Policy in Tupelo, Miss., the public interest firm that filed the lawsuit on Latimer’s behalf along with Lubbock attorney Jeffrey H. Conner.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction prohibiting the superintendent and school from prohibiting free speech by students in a non-school setting. The suit also seeks nominal and punitive damages.

Plano attorney Dennis Eichelbaum of the law firm Schwartz and Eichelbaum represents the school district, which has until later this month to file its response.

“You can be sure that they will deny the allegations,” Eichelbaum said. “Unlike the plaintiffs we won’t do it with a press release. We feel it is appropriate to try a case in court.”

News & Chronicle editor Ben Gillespie has been covering the story, which he said already has garnered national attention.

“We’ve received some additional letters to the editor from as far away as Pennsylvania,” he said.

Gillespie said he treated the letter to the editor just like any other letter he receives, checking it for libelous statements and then printing in on his opinion page.

“I felt like he (Latimer) had the right to express his opinion,” Gillespie said.

Gillespie said that after the letter was published the superintendent called him to complain that it was erroneous. Gillespie offered the superintendent a chance to submit his own rebuttal letter pointing out the errors but he said the superintendent never did.

So far community reaction in Crosbyton has been mixed, Gillespie said, but interest has piqued since the lawsuit was filed.

“Our papers have sold out of the newsstands this week,” Gillespie said.

While it is common for school officials to prohibit student newspapers from publishing certain material, First Amendment experts say this case is unique because it involves student off-campus speech in an independent newspaper.

“Generally we don’t see too many of these cases involving students writing letters to the editor to a local newspaper and being punished for it. Generally school officials don’t have the authority to regulate such off-campus speech,” David Hudson, an attorney with the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum, said.

“The student is acting more as a free, individual citizen than a student when sending a letter to the editor to an independent newspaper.”

Letter to the editor cases more often involve teachers not students.

Hudson wrote a paper on the notable case that set the standard for fundamental public employee free speech — Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High Sch. Dist. 205.

In that case the Supreme Court on June 3, 1968 overturned two lower court rulings and voted 8-1 that the school board did violate teacher Marvin Pickering’s constitutional rights by firing him over a letter to the editor that he drafted to The Lockport (Ill.) Herald criticizing the board’s handling of the bond and tax issues for two new schools.

Student free speech on the Internet, however, is a growing arena for court challenges.

“There has been a recent trend in the last several years of school officials attempting to clamp down on student online speech — even student online speech created on the students’ own computers on their own time,” Hudson said.

However, Hudson said, most courts are siding with the students in finding that school officials lack authority to regulate off-campus speech or that the activity is out of the scope of what is disruptive to the school environment.

The Student Press Law Center, a resource clearinghouse for the student media, tracks such cases nationwide.

In February 2000 a Washington school district was ordered to pay $62,000 to a student who sued after being suspended for creating a Web site that poked fun at his assistant principal, the SPLC reported.

In Pittsburgh last June a former high school student sued administrators who allegedly kicked him off the volleyball team for making negative comments on an Internet chat room, the SPLC reported.

In July, a 14-year-old Ohio middle school student filed suit against the North Canton City School District after school officials suspended him for creating a personal Web page about skateboarding.

And earlier this month in Pennsylvania, the Carbon County Vocational-Technical High School principal blocked school computers from accessing a personal Web page that two students created to criticize the school.

 

 

Student Free Speech Cases

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District

In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court extended substantial First Amendment protection to public school students in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. The case began in December 1965 when a group of adults and students in Des Moines decided to protest the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. The Court established what has become known as the Tinker Rule: "[T]he record does not demonstrate any facts which might reasonably lead school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, and no disturbances or disorders on the school premises in fact occurred."