The child, identified only in court documents as G.B., was barred
from attending Hershey Elementary School in
Pennsylvania for four days earlier this year after a bus driver
confiscated the pen, a writing implement that emits a small buzz
when triggered.
Later, the school’s principal said the toy was in
violation of the school’s weapon policy and issued the
suspension.
Principal Joy MacKenzie, the eight members of the Derry Township
School Board and the acting superintendent of schools are all
being sued by attorney’s representing the student’s family.
According to the parents, educators arbitrarily deprived their
child “of his state-created property interest in public
schooling without due process of law on the basis of nothing but
hysterical and overly-zealous application of a
constitutionally-deficient school policy.”
The pen, attorneys for the parents claim, is “similar to a
‘clown’ type buzzer that one would hold in the palm of one’s hand
to emit a small buzz when shaking hands.”
MacKenzie said the pen was in violation of the school’s weapons
policy, however, which bans “any poison gas, knife, cutting
instrument, cutting tools, nunchaku stick, firearm, shotgun,
rifle, and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of
inflicting bodily injury or property damage” from being
brought to class.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said the school went too far by
using the rule to remove the child from class.
“For G’s simple act of taking this pen with him on the bus to
school, G was disciplined with a four-day suspension and G has
now been permanently classified by the school district as a
violator of the district’s weapons policy. G’s permanent
disciplinary record has been marred, and he has been regulated to
the same category as violent criminals who bring knives, guns and
explosives onto school property for the purpose of assault,
murder and even terrorism,” they write.
The policy, attorneys add, is unconstitutional because “it
fails to define with specificity the kind of activity that is
proscribed so that a student can conform his or her conduct to
the Policy’s requirements.”
“Pennsylvania criminal law requires that any potential bodily
harm from an item alleged to be a weapon be ‘serious’ as an
appropriate limiting condition,” they attorneys write, adding
that the buzzing pen shouldn’t be considered an implement that
fits that criteria.
The parents are asking the court to place a permanent injunction
against enforcement of the school’s weapons policy and to expunge
“the incomprehensibly absurd ‘weapons violator’ status G now
bears.”
A spokesman for the school district told Courthouse News Service
that “out of respect for confidentiality we would never
discuss the discipline of an individual minor student, and for
that matter we don’t comment on active litigation either.”
Complaint, courtesy of TechDirt
Copyright: RT