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The history and continuation of racism in Newport News may be what has brought this teacher to the courts for relief when the school system cannot be relied upon to issue a sufficiently serious punishment against a teenager allegedly committing racist harassment of a teacher on a daily basis. It is a mockery of justice for the administration to issue a two-day suspension instead of expulsion when a white teenage student is caught on video regularly mocking his African American teacher with a banana in his doorway. This is an act which seems to imply the African-American teacher is some sort of monkey - a deeply outrageous and frightening insult and a threat especially in a state with a horrid history of KKK activity and lynchings.

Imagine a society where you can be accused of committing a wrong; where you are never permitted the right to counsel or the opportunity to confront your accuser; where you are never permitted the opportunity to fully investigate the evidence against you; where in a matter of days your entire case is processed in a kangaroo court of biased officials at the whim of popular politics rather than faithful to the facts; and when you are invariably found guilty, you are swiftly deprived of life, liberty, and/or property. It is exactly this fate that thousands of students have faced in our nation’s schools when accused of a sex offense, be it an unwelcome sexual comment to a classmate, discrimination, harassment, stalking, assault, or rape.

The US education system is under attack from many sides. Public schools are underfunded, leaving students and teachers to quixotically try to make up the difference in school supplies and other pedagogic resources through bake sales and online charity funding sites. Charter schools, though they provide a substantially better education for their select students, essentially form an elite, quasi-privatized subsystem that diverts scant public funds from public schools. Tracking, which is the process of segregating students into cohorts with which they stay throughout their public school careers based on their intellectual, academic, and/or test-taking abilities (think “honors track”, “gifted and talented classes”, “special education classes”, “remedial education”, and other subsections of our public school system), further deprives the great majority of students of the high quality education that is gifted upon elite students.

An attorney can do much for a student or other individual facing a school in an administrative grievance, investigation, hearing, or appeal, be it reviewing the facts and properly advising the individual, drafting correspondence or other documents in the dispute, negotiating with the school, representing the individual at hearings, filing complaints with governmental bodies, or preparing the foundations for litigation against the school in the court system. Schools know this, and that’s why they scurrilously try to prohibit attorney representation for individuals - be they students, teachers, or staff - in such disputes. It’s far easier for schools to remain unopposed, to intimidate you, and to take your money and time and leave you holding your head on the curb after it’s all over.

School bullying can result in criminal charges for assault, battery, and harassment, as well as civil damages for the torts of negligent supervision, training, retention, and hiring of school faculty and staff, civil harassment, defamation of character, civil assault, civil battery, conversion of personal property, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Parents can bring civil lawsuits on behalf of their children if they are the target of bullies, and they can contact the police to investigate criminal charges against juvenile bullies.

Students from all nations are guilty of cheating in school for one reason or another. Certainly there is no shortage of cheating by white students in US schools, and the same can be said of students of all ethnic backgrounds in any nation. According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, of 71,300 US undergraduate college students surveyed over the last dozen years 68% of them admitted to some form of cheating at school, while 43% of 17,000 graduate students surveyed admitted to the same. Of 70,000 US high school students surveyed at over 24 different high schools, 95% admitted to some form of cheating.

As soon as our reeling minds start to focus on why this tragedy happened and how we could try to prevent it from happening again, the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut today, along with similar school shootings throughout the country over the last decade including the famous 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Columbine, Colorado, raises questions for us about gun control laws in the face of the US Constitution's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Free Speech lawsuits generally conjure sensational images of controversial civil protests by angry grassroots political activists burning flags or crosses in broad view of the public. In recent months, a couple of interesting cases have been raised to the fore behind the regulated walls of public school rooms involving young girls causing a stir in Free Speech law.