The parents of a 16-year-old Central Davidson High School student filed a lawsuit against the local school board after their son was suspended for using the term “illegal alien” while completing a classroom assignment.
TPUSA reported at the time that the student, Christian McGhee, was allegedly suspended after using the term “illegal alien” while asking his teacher a question to better understand a vocabulary assignment, according to his mother, Leah McGhee, who spoke with the Carolina Journal about the incident.
“Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” Christian reportedly asked his teacher. The question resulted in his suspension from school for three days. The student was also prohibited from competing in a “season-defining track meet,” and denied the opportunity to appeal his punishment.
On Tuesday, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit against the Davidson County Board of Education on behalf of Christian and his parents for violating his rights to free speech, education, and due process.
A press release from the Center explains that, when he returned to school, Christian was “met with ostracism, bullying, and threats,” because administrators had “branded [Christian] as a racist.”
“Concerned for his safety, his parents unenrolled him and he is now completing the semester through a homeschooling program,” the Center wrote. Its lawsuit filed on behalf of Christian and his family argues that the school board had “no legal justification to suspend Christian because his comment was protected speech under the First Amendment. The lawsuit also seeks to remove the suspension from Christian’s academic record.”
Leah McGhee said that she raised her son to “reject racism in all its forms, but it is the school, not Christian, that injected race into this incident.”
“It appears that this administration would rather destroy its own reputation and the reputation of my son rather than admit they made a mistake,” she added.
As noted in TPUSA’s previous report on the suspension, the North Carolina school district’s handbook states, “In general, schools may place restrictions on a student’s right to free speech when the speech is obscene, abusive, promoting illegal drug use, or is reasonably expected to cause a substantial disruption to the school day.”
Attorneys representing the family argue that Christian’s comments did not “cause a substantial disruption,” rather, the administrators’ response and handling of the circumstance could be interpreted as disruptive.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
