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Boy’s rights violated?School defends suspension of student with anti-Obama T-shirtPeter Marcus, DDN Staff WriterWednesday, September 24, 2008 | |
A sixth-grader in Aurora says he’s been suspended from school for wearing a homemade T-shirt that said “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.”
Eleven-year-old Daxx Dalton and his father, Dann Dalton, say his First Amendment rights were violated.
“It’s the public school system,” Dann Dalton told KDVR-TV MyFox Colorado. “Let’s be honest, it’s full of liberal loons.”
Aurora Public Schools officials say they respect students’ free speech rights but also watch for things that might interrupt the learning environment. They say they can’t discuss the specifics of Daxx’s case.
The school system, however, offered this statement:
“In this case, response to the student’s shirt resulted in a very loud argument on the playground before school. The student was screaming and loudly arguing with other students. When students went to class, the discussion continued and disrupted learning in a math classroom.
“On the same day at Aurora Frontier K-8, the student’s sister wore a shirt with an anti-Obama message, which did not disrupt learning and no discipline was imposed in that case,” continued the statement. “Students at this school and throughout the district have been wearing endorsement shirts for both presidential candidates. Because these shirts have not caused disruptions, students have not been asked to remove them.”
Dalton was offered the option of turning the shirt inside out or changing into another shirt, but he declined the offer, arguing that his First Amendment rights prevailed.
“They’re taking away my right of freedom of speech,” he told MyFox Colorado. “If I have the right to wear this shirt I’m going to use it. And if the only way to use it is get suspended, then I’m going to get suspended.”
Lawsuit coming?
Dann Dalton told MyFox Colorado he’s considering a lawsuit. The trucker father is no stranger to free-speech issues. He has apparently protested outside the home of a doctor who provided abortions, according to a Rocky Mountain News story. When the Arapahoe County commissioners passed a law requiring protesters to keep moving and restrict the size of their signs, Dalton showed up in the quiet neighborhood where the doctor lived and said, “Hopefully we’ll have Greyhound bus tours through the area before long,” according to the Rocky article at the time.
Also, during a 2003 protest at the Colorado Capitol supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Dalton was quoted shouting “Bomb Islam” toward anti-war protesters, according to a Denver Post story.
He told MyFox Colorado that the issue concerning his son is all about freedom of speech.
“The facts are his rights were violated. Period,” he said.
The AP contributed to this story.
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