The
Southern Legal Resource Center
News Release
For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 2, 2006
Blount County school board, school officials sued over ban on
Confederate flag
KNOXVILLE, TN
– Three high school students and their parents are suing
the Blount County School Board and two school officials in
connection with the ban on Confederate symbols currently in effect
there. The suit will be filed today at the federal courthouse in
Knoxville.
The suit charges that the students’
constitutional rights were violated between May of 2005 and
January of 2006, when they were subjected to disciplinary action
for wearing items of clothing bearing the Confederate flag. The
action taken against the students, as well as the ban on
Confederate symbols itself, violates their First Amendment rights
of free speech. The disciplinary action taken against them also
violates Fourteenth Amendment principles of equal protection and
due process, the suit alleges.
Knoxville Attorney Val Irion is
acting as counsel for the students and their families, supported
by the Southern Legal Resource Center of Black Mountain, North
Carolina. The SLRC, as it is known, is a legal organization that
specializes in civil rights cases involving Southern heritage and
culture issues.
“In a school system that supposedly
prizes diversity and allows students to wear and display all
manner of ethnic and cultural symbols, these kids were
discriminated against simply for taking pride in their own
ancestry,” said Roger McCredie, the SLRC’s Executive Director.
On February 10, Irion sent a letter
to William Blount Principal Steve Lafon, with copies to the school
board, seeking a review of the school’s policy. He received no
reply. “That means the taxpayers of Knox County now are going to
have to fund a lawsuit that’s been made necessary by their refusal
even to discuss this matter.”
Earlier this week the SLRC settled
a case out of court on behalf of its client Jacqueline Duty, a
Kentucky student who was barred from her senior prom for wearing
a, evening dress patterned after the Confederate flag. That case
in turn was based on another SLRC victory,
Castorina v. Madison County
Schools, in which an appellate court struck down a
school board’s ban on Confederate symbols. The Federal Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals, where the Castorina case was heard,
includes Tennessee, McCredie noted. “The Blount County School
Board’s legal counsel must surely be aware of that,” McCredie
said.
Irion will act as lead attorney in
the case, with SLRC Chief Trial Counsel Kirk D. Lyons acting as
co-counsel, McCredie said.
For additional
information, contact:
Roger McCredie
(828) 669-5189
(828) 301-5452 (cell)
exec@slrc-csa.org
