DUANE SHERRILL
Contributor
A Marion County middle school student has filed a lawsuit against the school district claiming that his Constitutional rights were violated when he was suspended from school for saying the word “bomb” to another student while at school.
The suit, filed by attorney Justin S. Gilbert on behalf of the unidentified middle school student, maintains the school system punished the youth after administrators took his comment to another student out of context thereby violating his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The text of the lawsuit, in part, maintains that on August 20, 2024, while working on an assignment in Mr. Pelphrey’s middle school English class, John Doe, 14, told his friend and fellow football player to “stop tapping that pencil before I bomb you.”
Doe’s teammate was not afraid. Mr. Pelphrey heard the remark and sent Doe to the principal’s office, the suit states.
“We have to take things like this seriously,” Mr. Pelphrey wrote on his office referral form, as if the context did not matter. He documented Doe’s words as “bomb threat.”
Doe’s statement was hyperbole between friends, the suit maintains. “He had no literal bomb, as a search would soon obviously reveal. He had no history of bombing, no knowledge, tools, or plans whatsoever to detonate any bomb. Here was a 14-year-old boy simply using an exaggerated word to his teammate about aggravating noises while trying to focus on schoolwork.”
The suit also noted that Mr. Pelphrey was not afraid of Doe. In fact, he told Doe to walk unescorted to the principal’s office.
“He did, and Mr. Pelphrey carried on his class as normal,” the suit maintains. “Administration was not put on any high alert either. Having strolled to the principal’s office, Doe then waited fifteen or so minutes for Principal Nelson to arrive with a School Resource Officer. They asked Doe what he had said. Doe repeated that he had told his friend to “stop tapping that pencil before I bomb you.”
Doe was then arrested and charged with making a threat of mass violence on school property. Principal Nelson delivered a 180-day expulsion. No threat assessment was completed before Principal Nelson expelled Doe, the suit contends.
The suit maintains that the school did not go by the law that was laid down last year in light of the school shooting in Nashville.
The suit goes on the quote the law’s sponsor in the General Assembly. The plaintiff noted that the new law contains important contextual limitations. It criminalizes speech that “a reasonable person would conclude could lead to the serious bodily injury…or death of two or more persons” on a school campus. And to be consistent with the First Amendment, the legislature required school principals, law enforcement, and other government actors to make reasoned judgments about what is, and what is not, a threat.
“We’re looking for someone serious about blowing up Second Avenue,” State Senator Farrell Haile, the bill’s sponsor, told reporters shortly before its passage. “We’re talking about a patient making threats to kill a physician. We’re talking about someone plotting to shoot up a school…If you’ve got a 14- or 15-year-old kid spouting off, we don’t want them arrested. We don’t want that on their record.”
The plaintiff goes on to maintain that the youth was not given due process in his hearing and that a threat assessment by Homeland Security had not been completed before judgement was passed.
Along with being placed into Marion County Alternative School for a semester, the suit maintains he was also prevented from participating in extracurricular events.
“Due to being placed in the alternative school, MCSD stripped Doe of participating in any extracurricular programs including sports,” the suit says. “He is banned from all school property other than alternative school, meaning he is removed from sports, extracurricular, school functions, and all school events. This harm Doe both educationally, as well as emotionally, stigmatizing him, and causing him to suffer deep humiliation and embarrassment.”
