| Supreme Court Tosses Confederate Flag Sketch Appeal | |
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Dateline: 10/09/00
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of a Kansas boy suspended from school for drawing a Confederate flag.
On Oct. 2, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court refused without comment to hear the appeal of J.T. West, of Derby, Kansas.
In 1998, West, then a seventh-grader at Derby's Derby Middle School, drew a 4-by-6 inch sketch of the Confederate battle flag during a math class. When a fellow student showed the drawing to the teacher, school officials imposed a 3-day suspension on West for violating the "racial harassment and intimidation" policy.
The
policy bans students from possessing "any written
material, either printed or in their own handwriting, that is racially divisive
or creates ill will or hatred." Incidents of racial unrest had moved the
district to adopt the policy in 1995. At
the time, West told reporters from the Wichita Eagle newspaper that a
fellow student had suggested that he draw the Confederate "Stars and
Bars" -- a symbol considered by the school district to depict racial
intolerance or white supremacy, rather than pride in Southern history. West
told Wichita Eagle reporter Julie Mah that he had seen the flag in
history
books and on TV. "I didn't even know what it meant," he said. "I
don't see it as being racial." A Derby school official interviewed by Mah
for the Wichita Eagle stated, "You don't display a Confederate flag. You don't display
a swastika. You don't write a racial slur on the front of your notebook."
However, the school did acknowledge the non-racial significance of the
Confederate flag and that, "it
would be appropriate to study or draw a Confederate flag in the context of a
history class."
James Crump, president of the Wichita, Kansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People told the Eagle that, while children need to be informed about racism and slavery, the isolated, non-malicious act of drawing the Confederate flag should not warrant suspension. "If you start running from history, and you don't know why you're running from history, then you have tunnel vision," he stated.
Arguing the suspension violated his First Amendment rights of free expression, West and his father appealed, but both a Federal trial judge and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the school district.
Testimony before the appeals court revealed that West had previously been suspended from the Derby school for calling a student "blackie" and had been reminded of the harassment and intimidation policy at that time.
The appeals court wrote in its decision that the school district, "had reason to believe that a student's display of the Confederate flag might cause disruption and interfere with the rights of other students to be secure and let alone."
Lawyers for West expressed disappointment with the Supreme Court's refusal to hear their appeal, and were quoted in an Oct. 3, 2000 Reuters report as saying, "You don't teach democratic values by slamming a hammer down on someone because of free expression."
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in full, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
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