Attorneys to split fees in 10 Commandments case

This from the Herald-Leader:

LOUISVILLE — Two attorneys have been awarded more than $44,000 in fees after winning a battle over the public display of the Ten Commandments at a Kentucky courthouse.

U.S. District Judge Joseph H. McKinley said attorneys David Friedman and William E. Sharp, both of whom argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, should split $44,208 after winning a permanent injunction keeping the text out of the courthouse...

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that displays inside the McCreary and Pulaski county courthouses were unconstitutional while the U.S. 6th District Court of Appeals said a Mercer County Courthouse display that incorporated other historical documents was constitutional.

Since then, Ten Commandments displays and monuments in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia have been challenged and taken down.

Students, parents bare claws over dress codes

This from MSNBC:

As policies spread, free-speech disputes ending up in courts nationwide

It took only an hour for parents in Omaha, Neb., to get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union. Their children — 23 of them — had been suspended from school for wearing the wrong clothes.

The teenagers, all students at Millard South High School, were ordered to stay home from one to three days in late August for wearing T-shirts that memorialized Julius Robinson, 18, a Millard South football player who was shot to death in June. The shirts were being sold to help raise money so Robinson’s family could buy a headstone for his grave.

Robinson was “just a really good guy,” said Dan Kuhr, a friend who designed the shirts. “He didn’t cause a lot of trouble.”

But to officials of the Millard Public Schools, the words “Julius RIP” on the shirts were disruptive. After consulting with Omaha police, they also said the shirts could be considered gang-related...

Judge: Florida Principal went on ‘witch hunt'

This from the Panama City News Herald:

Court thrashes ‘relentless crusade' against homosexuality

PONCE DE LEON — Principal David Davis led a "relentless crusade" against homosexuality at Ponce de Leon High School, a federal judge said in court documents filed Thursday.

It cost the school district $325,000, but the court's full opinion was not released until this week. It thrashed Davis, who has since been replaced as principal.

"Davis embarked on what can only be characterized as a witch hunt," wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak, who blasted him for his "morality assemblies" and misunderstanding of the First Amendment.

The opinion came more than two months after Heather Gillman and the American Civil Liberties Union won a free-speech lawsuit against the Holmes County School Board, which actually was Davis' complicit "alter ego," Smoak wrote.

Gillman and the ACLU claimed Davis violated her rights by silencing all pro-gay messages. Students had begun showing support after the taunting of a gay student at school.

In response to the taunting incident, Davis told the gay student it wasn't right for her to be homosexual and held a morality assembly, according to testimony.

Then, after an investigation into the "secret society" of gay pride at school, Davis suspended several students for supporting the girl. He told one suspended student's mother "he could secretly send her daughter off to a private Christian school" and said "if there was a man in your house ... you wouldn't be having any of these gay issues," according to the court.

Davis banned rainbows, pink triangles and a number of what he called sexually suggestive slogans. The slogans included "I Support Gays" and "God Loves Me Just the Way I Am."

But Smoak noted that Davis did not ban several magazines in the school's library -- Cosmogirl, Woman's Day and others -- that contained articles about sex and dating. He also did not punish a boy for making explicit sexual advances toward a girl, an incident that occurred the same month as the morality assembly, according to testimony.

Davis hushed Gillman and others "because of his animosity toward students who were homosexual and his relentless crusade to extinguish the speech supporting them," Smoak wrote.
Advocates celebrated the court's opinion Friday.

"The atmosphere that was created at the school was so intimidating for these kids," said Chris Hampton, who worked on the case for the ACLU from the start. "It's not about everyone agreeing; it's about being able to disagree respectfully."

Smoak wrote that the court's opinion was not meant to "mandate a social norm for Holmes County or its schools," but rather to apply the Constitution to the case.

"Indeed, Davis' opinions and views are consistent with the beliefs of many in Holmes County, in Florida, and in the country," Smoak wrote.

"Where Davis went wrong was when he endeavored to silence the opinions of his dissenters," he said.

Interview with Heather Gillman : Audio

Student locator tags: Evil or helpful?

This from the Providence Journal:

PROVIDENCE — With an increased emphasis on school safety across Rhode Island, identification cards, metal detectors and campus police officers have become familiar sights. But do tracking devices that follow students’ every movement go too far?

When the Middletown School Department earlier this year piloted a program equipping elementary students’ backpacks with radio frequency locator tags, school officials promised improved safety for children in transit to and from school on buses.

“That’s Big Brother at its scariest,” said Steven Brown, president of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly opposed the plan.

Brown wasn’t alone. The story made national news and House and Senate lawmakers, worried about privacy violations, passed legislation prohibiting the use of such tags to track students...

Florida School District Sued Over Low Graduation Rates

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a class action against the Palm Beach County, Fla., school district, claiming its low graduation rate is a violation of the Florida Constitution. Even using the “most generous” measures, the lawsuit says, almost a third of the students in the 175,000-student district do not graduate. The graduation rates of black and Hispanic students, which are lower than those of white students, further establish that the district is failing its students, it says...

This from Education Week (subscription).

And this from the EdJurist Accord.

ACLU Lawsuit claims Privately Run Atlanta School Abuses Students

Humiliating' searches, violence,

failure to educate among accusations

A privately run Atlanta public school acts as a virtual prison that subjects students to routine body searches, leaves them unprotected against violence and fails to educate them, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by, the American Civil Liberties Union.

The lawsuit targets both the Atlanta Board of Education and Community Education Partners, the private company that has a contract to run the alternative school for middle and high school students who have been expelled from regular public schools.

The ACLU contends the school violates the United States and Georgia constitutions on a number of levels including failing to provide an adequate education. The lawsuit also claims the school subjects students to unreasonable body searches.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of eight students, depicts the school as awash in violence, inflicted by students, faculty and police. The school documented 189 fights among its 415 students in 2006, according to the lawsuit. The school was responsible for nearly 68 percent of all the battery reports compiled by the 90 schools in the Atlanta Public School district.

"None of these reports reflects the violence inflicted upon students by teachers and administrators," the lawsuit said. "Teachers and at least one administrator routinely hit students, throw books and throw students against the walls or to the floor. Nor do these reports reflect the violence inflicted by school resource officers and police officers. Such officers are often physically aggressive and have a practice of using choke-holds on students."

Community Education Partners, based in Nashville, Tenn., could not be reached for comment...

This from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Texas District to Settle Bible Suit

A West Texas school district has agreed to change the curriculum for a high school course on the Bible to settle a lawsuit that said it amounted to religious indoctrination.

The federal suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way Foundation on behalf of eight parents in the Odessa area. It argued that the course curriculum, adopted in 2005 by the Ector County Independent School District, promoted Protestant Christianity and a specific reading of the Bible as a literal
historical document.

Public schools can teach the Bible if done in a neutral way. It cannot be taught as it would be in a Sunday school class, legal scholars said. As part of the settlement, the district agreed to use a new curriculum developed by a committee of local educators.

This from the New York Times.