August 2008 Archives

Stirring the culture wars a bit just as Republicans are arriving in St. Paul, Minn., for their convention, a federal appeals court has upheld the right of a gay student group to have the same access at a Minnesota public high school for meetings and communications as other student groups.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled unanimously that the group Straights and Gays for Equality had the same right under the federal Equal Access Act to facilities as other student groups at Maple Grove High School in the Osseo, Minn., area school district.

The court rejected the schools arguments that other student groups were curriculum-related and thus no limited public form has been created under the federal law, which requires federally funded schools to treat non-curriculum related student clubs on equal terms.

Off to the GOP Convention: Speaking of Minnesota, I'll be heading to St. Paul this weekend to cover the Republican National Convention for Education Week. I've been heavily involved in our coverage of the Democratic National Convention this week, which is basically why I haven't been updating the School Law Blog much this week. I will be back to blogging here the week after next.

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Pennsylvania's record-keeping requirements for home-schoolers do not violate families' free-exercise-of-religion rights under the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled today.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia, unanimously rejected a First Amendment challenge by six home-schooling families who argued that the requirements infringe on their sincerely held Christian religious beliefs.

Under state law, parents who home school their children must provide instruction for a minimum number of days and hours in certain subjects and must submit a portfolio of teaching logs and the children’s work product for review by the local school district. The families had sought exemptions to the reporting requirements, saying they interfered with parental control of their children's education.

In its opinion in Combs v. Homer-Center School District, the court said parents have a general right to control the education of their children, but they "do not have a constitutional right to avoid reasonable state regulation of their children’s education. [The state law's] reporting and superintendent-review requirements ensure children taught in home education programs demonstrate progress in the educational program."

The court did remand the case to the state courts for consideration of whether the reporting requirements conflict with a state law known as the Religious Freedom Protection Act.

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A federal appeals court today upheld a prohibition on displaying the Confederate flag in a Tennessee high school that had experienced racial tensions.

"The facts in this case ... indicate that school officials could reasonably forecast that permitting students to wear clothing depicting the Confederate flag would cause disruptions to the school environment,'' said the unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati.

The decision in Barr v. LaFon upholds summary judgment in favor of the Blount County, Tenn., school district and administrators in a challenge to the prohibition by students "who would like to express their Southern heritage by wearing clothing depicting the Confederate flag at school."

The appeals court pointed to facts in the record about several racial incidents at William Blount High School, including an alleged physical altercation between black and white students at a basketball game in 2005, and several incidents of racist graffiti found in a boys' restroom, including one depicting a noose.

Lawyers for the students who challenged the district argued there was no evidence that Confederate flag symbols had caused disruptions at the school.

But the court said the racist graffiti "exemplifies how school officials reasonably concluded that the connection between the symbolism of the Confederate flag and racial tensions at the school meant that the Confederate flag would likely have a disruptive effect on the school."

This case on Confederate flags in the schools is not the same as one from another Tennessee school district that ended up in a mistrial last week because a federal district court jury could not reach a verdict. I briefly blogged on that case here and here.

UPDATE: The Associated Press reports on the decision here.

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I took a vacation day on Friday, thinking that the school law beat would be relatively quiet in the middle of August. But all kinds of stories were breaking ...

Violent Essay: A Minnesota high school student's creative-writing class story about a student who murders his teacher and commits suicide was not speech protected by the First Amendment, a federal appeals court has ruled. The court upheld seizure of the 17-year-old student by county authorities for a psychiatric evaluation.
"This lengthy essay describing an obsession with weapons and gore, a hatred for his English teacher with a similar name who had been critical of his prior essays, a surprise attack at a high school, and the details of his teacher’s murder and the narrator’s suicide lead to the inescapable conclusion that it was a serious threat directed at" the student's teacher, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis, said in its Aug. 15 opinion in Riehm v. Engelking.

Lawsuit Over Death of Gay Student: The family of Larry King, a 15-year-old Oxnard, Calif., youth who was shot and killed in school, has filed a lawsuit claiming that the school district's actions allowing the young gay man to wear makeup and feminine clothing contributed to his death, the Associated Press reports here. A classmate of King's has pleaded not guilty in the shooting death.
For an exhaustive report on King's death, see Newsweek's cover story from last month, "Young, Gay, and Murdered."

Mistrial in Confederate Flag Suit: A Tennessee student's lawsuit challenging school restrictions on displays of the Confederate flag has ended up in a mistrial, the AP reports here. The story, which may be a pickup from a local newspaper, helpfully explains that the stars and bars symbol was flown by some Confederate troops during the Civil War, and that the "northern states loyal to the federal government crushed a secession effort by southern slave-holding states."

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During a quiet week in mid-August, it's time to catch up with these school law developments of the past few days:

Confederate Symbols in School: A Tennessee student's lawsuit challenging school restrictions on displays of the Confederate flag has gone to trial, as the Associated Press reports here.

California Curriculum: A federal district judge has ruled that the University of California system may deny admissions recognition for courses at Christian high schools that used textbooks that did not meet college-preparatory standards.
The schools used books that treated the Bible as an irrefutable source on historic events and taught students to reject scientific evidence whenever it may be inconsistent with the Bible, but there was no religious animus in the university's decisions, said the Aug. 8 opinion by U.S. District Judge S. James Otero in Association of Christian Schools International v. Stearns.
The University of California system has this press release on the ruling.
The ASCI's lawsuit is here, and its overview of the case is here.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Judge Otero's ruling here.

New Suit Over 'Native Hawaiians': The Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii are again being sued over their policy of limiting admissions to students of Hawaiian descent. The school, like the state of Hawaii in various governmental programs, defines Native Hawaiians as the descendants of indigenous inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands before the first landfall of Westerners in 1778.
The new suit filed last week on behalf of four families alleges that the restriction violates federal civil rights laws, according to this press release from their lawyers.
The school's policy was upheld in a previous challenge by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in this decision. But when the student in that case appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the school reached a settlement, which I reported on in Education Week here.
The disclosure that the student in the original lawsuit was paid a settlement of $7 million has prompted the Kamehameha Schools to file its own lawsuit for breach of confidentiality. That suit is here and an announcement is here.
Thanks to Scotusblog for the tip.
Although the challenged policy at the Kamehameha Schools is probably unique in the nation, I am hopeful that this new suit will one day reach the Supreme Court. Education Week has a general practice of visiting the sites of origin for all major education cases being argued in the high court, and I would be happy to fulfill that responsibility with a trip to Hawaii.

Aloha!

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An Illinois high school student expelled over a gang-related confrontation in the cafeteria received sufficient due process because he was given notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard, a federal appeals court ruled today.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in Chicago, unanimously held that the student and his parents were not entitled to greater due process, such as the opportunity to cross-examine school security guards or to have the services of a Spanish-language interpreter at the hearing.

According to court documents, Roger Coronado Jr. was a 15-year-old student at Bolingbrook High School in Bolingbrook, Ill., last February when he was allegedly involved in a cafeteria confrontation between rival gangs that a school security guard described as "posturing."

Coronado was charged by school officials with participation in a "subversive organization" and later "fighting/mob action." He was expelled for two semesters.

In a lawsuit challenging the discipline, Coronado and his parents argued that the penalty of expulsion requires more due process than the notice and hearing that the student received.

Both a federal district court and the 7th Circuit appellate court declined the family's request for an injunction allowing Coronado to return to school until a second hearing with greater due process safeguards could take place.

Citing circuit precedents, the 7th Circuit court said in its opinion in Coronado v. Valley View School District 365U that due process does not "require a judicial or quasi-judicial trial—with all of the features and safeguards of, e.g., a delinquency proceeding—before a school may punish misconduct."

The opinion says most courts have refused to recognize a right of students to confront and cross-examine witnessess in a school disciplinary hearing. And the student's claim that a lack of a Spanish interpreter at the hearing violated his due-process rights had no merit because it was unclear that his parents needed one or that the family had even requested one, the court said. The court noted that Coronado's father had spoken up at the hearing to discuss his son's goals, request leniency for him, and commend school officials' tackling of the gang problem, all in English.

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A federal judge has issued an injunction barring a Virginia school district from imposing rental fees on an afterschool religious club when it waives the fees for the Boy Scouts and most school-related groups and charitable events.

U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson of Newport News, Va., said in his Aug. 8 opinion that the rental policy of the Williamsburg-James City County school district likely violates the First Amendment rights of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Virginia, which sponsors the afterschool Good News Clubs promoting Christianity among voluntary attendees.

The district's "policy empowers its superintendent to decide which organizations are allowed to
have fee waivers without setting forth any concrete standards," Judge Jackson said in granting the religious group's request for a preliminary injunction.

The judge said the facts were similar to a 2006 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Va. In that case, Child Evangelism Fellowship of South Carolina v. Anderson School District No. 5 , the appeals court held that a superintendent's broad discretion to deny fee waivers to the Good News Club violated the First Amendment.

Although it dealt not with fee waivers but the question of whether such afterschool religious clubs could meet at all on school grounds, another instructive case in this general area is the U.S. Supreme Court's 2001 decision in Good News Club v. Milford Central School.

Liberty Counsel, which helped win the Virginia injunction for Child Evangelism Fellowship, has this press release on the case.

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A state appellate court in California has reversed its own controversial ruling and held that parents without teaching credentials may home school their children.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal said in its Aug. 8 ruling in Jonathan L. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County that state statutes and case law at one time required homeschooled children to be taught by a credentialed teacher, but "subsequent developments in the law call this conclusion into question."

"Although the Legislature did not amend the statutory scheme so as to expressly permit home schooling, more recent enactments demonstrate an apparent acceptance by the Legislature of the proposition that home schooling is taking place in California, with home schools allowed as private schools," the court said.

The reversal was hailed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and groups that supported home schoolers, who had feared that the earlier ruling effectively outlawed the practice for many of California's 166,000 home-schooled children.

The Los Angeles Times reports here.

California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, who had filed a brief urging the court to reverse itself, has this press release.

Liberty Counsel, a group that helped seek the reversal, has this press release.

It appears that the appellate court's controversial earlier ruling has been taken down. I blogged about the ruling here and here.

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A school's frequent placement of a disruptive special education student in a small room for "timeout" did not violate his constitutional rights, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The mother of a 1st grader in the Albuquerque, N.M., school district claimed in a lawsuit that placing her son in a small, dimly lighted room for five minutes or more at a time violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure and his 14th Amendment right of due process of law.

A federal district judge agreed, ruling that a teacher violated the boy's clearly established rights by placing him in the "closet-like" timeout room without following proper procedures. The judge denied qualified immunity to the teacher and allowed the suit against the school district to proceed.

In its opinion in Couture v. Board of Education of the Albuquerque Public Schools, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, unanimously reversed the district judge and held that the timeouts did not violate the boy's rights.

The court noted that teachers reported that the boy, who was in special education because of an emotional disturbance, was highly disruptive. He sometimes threatened to kill other children and once threatened to throw hot oil on one of his teachers, court papers say.

Supervised timeouts were authorized in the student's individualized education plan as a technique to help calm the boy down, the court noted.

On the lawsuit's Fourth Amendment claim, the court assumed without deciding that the timeouts constituted seizures, but it held that they were reasonable.

The boy's "emotional problems posed an extremely difficult challenge," the court said. "We refuse to say that given this situation, these diligent and well-trained teachers acted unreasonably in continuing to use timeouts, as prescribed by [his] IEP."

The court also rejected a 14th Amendment procedural due-process claim, holding that the frequent timeouts were not the same as suspensions or expulsions from school.

"Timeouts, unlike suspensions or expulsions, are intended to settle down a child while keeping him within close proximity to the classroom; this way, he can resume his education as soon as he has calmed," the court said.

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A federal appeals court is expected to hear arguments this fall in a challenge to a Texas law mandating a "moment of silence" to "reflect, pray, [or] meditate," the Houston Chroncle reports here. (Thanks to How Appealing for the tip.)

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a brief on Monday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, to uphold the 2003 statute, which he says promotes patriotism and thoughtful contemplation, not religion. The brief is here, and a news release is here.

A federal district judge upheld the law against a facial challenge by a Texas couple that argued the inclusion of the word "pray" violated the First Amendment's prohibition against government establishment of religion.

"A reasonable observer would not find the addition of the word 'pray' to operate as an endorsement of religion or prayer in the classroom," U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn of Dallas said in her January ruling.

The family that challenged the law then appealed that ruling to the 5th Circuit.

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