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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 19945
[Legal]
Date Posted:
8/21/2008
11:56:59 am EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 5,131
RSS: 6,584
Comments: 4
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6th Circuit Supports Tenn. School's Confederate Flag Ban
Author: The Associated Press Source: First Amendment Center Online
Title: 6th CIRCUIT SUPPORTS TENN. SCHOOL'S CONFEDERATE FLAG BAN
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday in favor of a Tennessee school system that banned the Confederate battle flag because of concerns the symbol could inflame racial tensions at a high school.
Students Derek Barr, Chris White, Roger Craig White and their parents claimed in a lawsuit that their free-speech rights were violated by the 2005 flag ban at William Blount High School in Maryville, about 15 miles south of Knoxville.
School officials said the ban came after previous race-related incidents that included a racial slur, a fight, a civil rights complaint, a lockdown and graffiti depicting a Confederate flag and a noose.
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Community Thoughts: There are 4 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Just To Throw My To Cents In To This | Aug 21st. at 9:36:31 pm EDT
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Dennis Deal (Nazareth, Pennsylvania) - Email Me
The north and south were not in any mood to agree on anything. This was a bad case of allowing the radicals on both sides of aisle to control the debate.
The civil war was about the constitution. I know that previous poster does not agree with that, but fact is. Abrham Lincoln only signed the Mancipation. After the last southeren stae had succesded from the Union. It was a calculated attempt to keep the British and France from supporting the Confederacy with troops.
And the kicker is that the slavery was already on the way out. The days of the large plantations were becoming a thing of the past.
Most historians agree that had the north and south found a way to agree on issues and were both willing to comprise.
The south would have gotten everything it had wanted twenty years down the line. The slavery would have been freed.
In the end The civil war should have stayed in the courts. And the stars and bars would not have be vilified today.
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| Once Upon A Time, The Swastika | Aug 21st. at 8:15:17 pm EDT
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Jenna (Cary, North Carolina) - Email Me
was a symbol of good luck and peace. Guess what? The Nazis have forever ruined that and if you fly the swastika in my neighbourhood, I ,as a granddaughter of a man who died in the Holocaust , WILL tear in up into tiny pieces and cuss your racist behind out. That's just what happens when you decide to fly symbols that have been used to oppress a large group of people in history. Sorry, this isn't the 1930's and racist white Protestant white guys no longer have carte blanche in the South.
On another note, it always makes me laugh to hear people describe the cause of the Civil War as being state's rights. Hmmm, state's right to do what, Dixie Lee? To own other human beings, rape the women, and sell their children, that's what! I swear, I've never been prouder to have been born a Canadienne as I feel after having lived a decade in the American South. It's time to retire that old line, folks. Nobody up North cares about the Civil War in terms of today's politics (I have many relatives in NY and PA) , but Southerners act as if it were still going on and they have a fighting chance. The whole state's right thing needs to be retired completely in terms of government as well. Why should people in the South have to live with near Biblical law while people in the North and West have laws much closer to those of Europe? This is supposed to be one nation, there is such a thing as Federal Law; it's time to make laws acrossed the states' lines conform to a national standard. Shalom.
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| Problematic Decision Open To Misapplication | Aug 21st. at 4:34:40 pm EDT
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me - Web
This decision is very problematic, as to tolerating if not endorsing censorship of speech of many meanings including in theory highly protected religious, ethnic, artistic, or political speech, while likely being used as a broad excuse to censor controversial symbols despite the court wording this decision with many narrowing and conditional provisions. How many school officials will act on it as if justification for censorship the actual case does not support?
[Web LINK]
Core details of this decision explicitly state it is NOT a ban on Confederate flags in schools, nor against speech some students or faculty dislike, but is narrowly limited to cases only where Confederate flags have been documented to be used as a form of "fighting words" causing actual criminal incidents or serious school disruption, and then only when all such symbols have been uniformly treated similarly in a current local context:
[[[Were there evidence that the school in practice enforced the dress code against the Confederate flag but not against other racially divisive symbols, we would need to reverse the grant of summary judgment for the school. ]]]
[[[We caution, however, that our decision today does not establish a precedent justifying a school’s ban on student speech merely because other students find that speech offensive: we simply hold that the school’s dress code as applied to ban the Confederate flag is constitutional because of the disruptive potential of the flag in a school where racial tension is high and serious racially motivated incidents, such as physical altercations or threats of violence, have occurred.]]]
This kind of case law invites bans on xtian crosses, that have been used as symbols of genocide, oppression, and gang violence, including by "pole people" nailing images of fellow students to poles as targets of stalking, harassment, intimidation, and other abuse. As in some school shooting incidents bible clubs engaged in that kind of abuse towards fellow students have been primary targets of shooters rebuffed by school officials previously asked to intervene or assist victims of such xtian cross based gangs at schools, clearly this case disallows restriction of Confederate flags in any school with both kinds of disruptive activities unless both such symbols are banned.
This case also cites some defective case law, like Morse v. Frederick. That's the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case, where the apparently accurate record of fact from the lower court was subverted into an editorial fraud by SCOTUS, in order to rationalize what became more of a political than judicial result. It becomes very tricky reading case law when part of the analysis is how to reverse bad decisions, or when black robed lynchmen substitute for justices and invite questions of efficacy of RTKBA extermination as domestic enemies rather than examples of substantive due process and justice.
Barr v. Lafon could be read to justify censorship of nearly anything in some school context, including parents or teachers driving cars with blue paint on or near school grounds or off campus public events, if blue was linked to some violent incident and ongoing conflict, even if most students and parents had no direct involvement in or intent to further some unrelated factional conflict in that school. Certainly the same hair styles ruled illegal to restrict in a Virginia Beach, VA nightclub case last year as reflecting illegal racial discrimination could be found to be speech promoting racial violence in the context of Barr v. Lafon, while Knoxville, TN unavoidably has rabid fundies using xtian crosses as symbols of gang hatred and promotion of wrongful discrimination. This case could also be paradoxical, if Tinker style black armbands it recognizes as protected speech were part of a movement against Bush's war crimes or to promote racial justice, and some other faction of students initiated violent incidents linked to such speech.
Barr v. Lafon overall comes across as a fraud. It purports to develop a narrow standard for when limited restriction on otherwise protected speech in schools can be justified. It does so however in such a broad manner as to justify all sorts of bans on speech with no intent to cause the alleged violent or disruptive meanings, or which is otherwise highly protected speech other students may violently dislike, but have an obligation to tolerate on the streets of the same city as expressing a highly protected religious or political position. The school and court do students a disservice by censoring such speech, rather than focusing on students who initiate wrongful violence as criminals, while teaching functional social process for future adults to coexist despite sometimes intense disagreements. This decision treads on the legal basis for "fighting words" doctrine, while applying that doctrine with a broad brush to abridge many cases where the same words or symbols do not have that direct and immediate intent.
Find More info -- HERE
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| Was I Asleep During American History? | Aug 21st. at 2:44:27 pm EDT
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AmberMoon (Hockessin, Delaware) - Email Me
The school I attended and the instructor that I had for American History emphasized on several occassions during the discussion of the Civil War that the war was not fought on the basis of freeing the slaves, but on the rights of a state to choose to secede from the United States aka The Union. The Confederate flag therefore has not connection with the treatment of people as property. I feel that the courts decision was incorrect and creates a dangerous precedence. What other symbols could be argued as being offensive to a individual or group of individuals. Bibles, the Koran, the Talmud in the school library. The wearing of a crucifix by individuals. Since the cross was the symbol under which the crusades were fought, so the Muslims would have a problem with it, not to mention the Jews, who were persecuted under it.
My point being is where does it stop being free expression and becomes prejudice. Come on people.
I tell you what my father and mother taught me. "The world is not fair, so their will be times that you will have to let things be."
Also while I got my head of steam going. Some of these individuals should see "The American President", the speech made at the end of the movie to the White House press core should make it perfectly clear to all.
Alright you can take back the soapbox.
BB
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