On Monday, The Alliance Defending Freedom posted an article about a recent lawsuit brought by a North Carolina high school student who was defending her First Amendment right to free speech.
The article reports:
To settle a lawsuit brought by a North Carolina high school student and her parents after school officials censored the student and repeatedly violated her constitutional rights, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education agreed to adopt a new student speech policy, exonerate the student, and pay $95,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent the Ardrey Kell High School junior, who seeks to share her Christian faith and values with others at school. After the assassination of free speech advocate Charlie Kirk last year, she felt inspired to use her voice to commemorate Kirk’s strong public defense of Christianity. She received permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock”—a large boulder on school grounds frequently used for the expression of various messages—in support of Kirk’s Christian message. Within hours, however, school officials ordered her message to be censored and then engaged in public efforts to humiliate her and the friends who helped her, prompting the lawsuit, G.S. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
…The student had seen other messages on the rock—ranging from support of National Football League teams to Black Lives Matter—so last September, after receiving permission from school officials, the student, her parents, and two fellow students painted it with the words “Freedom 1776” and “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25.” Within hours, the student learned from social media that officials ordered the “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25” portion to be painted over.
The next day, school officials sent out a schoolwide e-mail accusing her of “vandalism” and said that law enforcement was conducting an investigation; the statement aired on a local news station as well. The day after that, officials called the student out of class to write an official statement describing her actions and forced her to show them her phone logs. School officials never obtained permission from parents to go through her phone, nor did they inform the students or parents about their constitutional right to remain silent and contact an attorney during a criminal investigation.
I hope she received enoughs of the settlement to make a serious addition to her college fund!