According to the Chicago Tribune (emphasis added),
Several parents and their children filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court, saying the children’s 1st Amendment rights were violated last year when they were not allowed to wear a T-shirt bearing the word “Gifties” at a Chicago public school.
The controversy began during the 8th graders’ annual T-shirt design contest . . . .
About 80 students are in the class, with a third of them enrolled in the Regional Gifted Center program. Votes were cast for the best shirt design among 20 submitted, but there was a revote, the lawsuit said.
Sara Van Enck, a parent and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the second vote was taken because the principal didn’t like the shirt that Van Enck believes the students originally chose–a figure of a boy giving a “thumbs up” sign with his left hand. His right hand held a leash with a bulldog, the school’s mascot, on the end of it.
A different shirt was picked after the second vote, but a number of students apparently were unhappy with the design, the lawsuit said. . . .
Students in the gifted program decided to order the shirt they preferred and added the word “Gifties” to the back of it. “Gifties” is the nickname for students in the program.
Before they wore the shirt to school for the first time, they ran into opposition from the school’s principal, Chris Kotis, the lawsuit alleges. Kotis told them that no one could wear that shirt because it was not the “official” one and that there would be “serious consequences” if anyone did, the suit said.
The students came up with a petition supporting their T-shirt, the suit said. But Kotis insisted that he was concerned about their “safety” if they wore the shirt to school, the suit said.
On April 1, all 27 8th graders in the gifted program wore the shirt to school, the suit said.
Parents were called, and their class was placed in confinement that day and for other days during the rest of the school year, the lawsuit said. . . .
The lawsuit seeks to expunge from school records any discipline against the students involving the T-shirt incident. . . .
The principal’s actions, if they are indeed as described here, sound like the worst sort of bureaucratic pettiness. And though I’m not sure this is the sort of stuff that deserves litigation, the First Amendment claim is a valid one here — the First Amendment protects more than just political advocacy, and would cover T-shirts such as those here.
Comments are closed.