Punishment Upheld for Kindergartner Who Imagined Finger as Gun
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - NEW YORK TIMES
SAYREVILLE, N.J., June 21 - The Sayreville school district did not violate the civil rights of a kindergartner it suspended three years ago for pretending his hand was a gun and threatening to shoot his friends as they played during recess, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The ruling, issued Thursday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia and first reported in The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, affirmed a federal court decision last year. In that decision, a Federal District Court in Newark had dismissed a lawsuit filed by the boy's parents.
The parents, Scot and Cassandra Garrick, sued the school district after their son and three other pupils at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School were suspended for three days after an incident on March 15, 2000.
The children were playing at the time, pretending that their fingers were guns and saying to one another, "I want to shoot you." Their words were overheard by classmates, who told teachers.
The suspensions, part of the district's "zero tolerance" policy on violence, came just two weeks after a Michigan first grader killed a classmate with a handgun he had taken to school.
The Garricks were the only parents to bring a civil suit against the district. They sought unspecified damages and wanted the suspension removed from their son's permanent record. The Garricks enrolled their child in private school after the incident.
The court ruled that the district had not violated the Garrick boy's rights to free speech and due process. It said there must be a balance between the "freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in the classroom" and "society's countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior."
The superintendent of schools, Dennis Fyffe, called the ruling a victory for the district.
"These students were suspended under the school policy that deals with general school behavior," Mr. Fyffe told The Home News Tribune. "This was not cops and robbers."
Nisha N. Mohammed, a spokeswoman for the Rutherford Institute, a conservative Virginia-based nonprofit group that is representing the Garricks, said the parents were outraged by the ruling and were determined to appeal.
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