Thursday, December 17, 2015

Who's excited?!

It's here -- Star Wars day!

In that vein, I thought you'd be interested in a story about Star Wars and the First Amendment from the Volokh Conspiracy. 
Joe Southern says his [7th-grader] son, Colton, wore a shirt depicting the “Star Wars – The Force Awakens” logo, along with a Storm Trooper holding a weapon, to class Thursday at George Junior High School….
On Thursday, though, school officials told Colton the shirt was banned because it has a gun, or at least a picture of what in the movie is weapon….
A spokesperson for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District says the LCISD secondary school handbook spells out potential violations of dress code. The list includes “symbols oriented toward violence.”
Administrators say they did not reprimand the student, though they could have required him to change or assigned him in-school suspension. They say they only required him to zip up his jacket….

Volokh analyzes some First Amendment cases and then concludes: "...nothing about this T-shirt can reasonably be understood as promoting illegal blaster use. A pretty clear First Amendment violation, then, on the school district’s part."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a Storm Trooper -- everyone knows they can't hit the broad side of a death star anyway.

JAI said...

Obviously religious discrimination against non-Force users.