by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(June 4, 2008) The family of a Minnesota sixth grader who was repeatedly harassed by teachers and administrators for wearing t-shirts with a pro-life message is suing the school for infringing on his constitutional right to express his beliefs.
The 12 year old student, referred to in legal papers as “K.B.” because of his age, is a Christian who says he believes abortion is the wrongful taking of an innocent life and a grave offense against God.
According to K.B.’s lawyers at The Thomas More Law Center, a national public-interest law firm, KB chose to wear t-shirts to the Hutchinson Middle School in Hutchinson, Minnesota that contained pro-life messages such as “Abortion . . . growing, growing, gone,” “What part of abortion don’t you understand?” and “Never Known – Not Forgotten.” He chose to wear the shirts each day in April, leading up to April 29, which was designated as “National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day.”
On more than a dozen occasions during the month, school officials, including the principal and several teachers, told K. B. not to wear the t-shirts. They publicly singled him out for ridicule in front of his classmates, removed him from class, sent him to the principal’s office, forced him to turn his pro-life t-shirt inside out, and threatened him with suspension if he did not stop wearing the offending pro-life t-shirts.
“My son kept getting singled out,” said the boy’s mother, a single mother of three, to TwinCities.com. “He should be able to wear those shirts at school, and they decided that he can’t. It’s not right.”
In spite of being only 12 years-old, his opposition to abortion is genuine, she said. “We’re a Christian family. He knows it’s the termination of life. He knows that it’s wrong. He should have the right to wear the shirt to express that. Even if he’s the only person at the school who believes that, he should still be able to wear that shirt under the Constitution, and they’ve taken that away from him.”
Hutchinson public schools have a “Student Dress and Appearance Policy” that deems as inappropriate clothing which “bears a message which is lewd, vulgar or obscene.” The rules also say that if the administration determines a student’s clothing interferes with or disrupts “the educational process,” the student will be told to change clothes “or will be sent home for the day.”
Because K.B.’s mother does not believe her son’s actions violated any of these rules, she decided to seek the legal advice. She contacted the attorneys at The Thomas More Law Center and found out she had a case.
“The Supreme Court has held it permissible for public schools to limit student speech only when there is an actual and substantial disruption of school activity. That is not the case here,” said Brandon Bolling, the Law Center attorney assigned as lead counsel on the case. “The only people who took issue with the Pro-Life t-shirts were the school’s employees — in fact, if any one caused any disruption, it was the school’s employees, by their constant public harassment of our client because they disagreed with his pro-life message.”
Daron VanderHeiden, the school district superintendent, refused to comment on the case. “We’re currently seeking legal counsel,” he told TwinCities. “I don’t know the facts of the incident other than what’s in here (the lawsuit), and that’s their version of what happened.”
K.B.’s mother is asking the court to declare the school’s student-dress policy unconstitutional as applied to her son, and she wants unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from the school district. Even though her son has not been disciplined by the school, he has still been damaged by all the fuss teachers and administrators were making over him and the shirts.
“He shouldn’t have lost his reputation as a good kid,” she said. “He shouldn’t be known as the kid who is constantly going to the office. They look at him as defiant now. I applaud him. He is really shy. And it’s scary to stand up to people in authority, unless you’re a defiant kid, which he’s not. It was hard for him to get up every day and put the T-shirt on and go to school to try and carry on his mission for the month.”
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