Thursday, August 19, 2010

School Loses Lawsuit Against Pro-life Student

In a victory for pro-life speech in public school, a federal court entered a judgment Thursday against a California elementary school and three school officials for violating the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of a 6th grade student who wore a T-shirt opposing abortion.


-- From "Calif. school settles suit with anti-abortion girl" by The Associated Press 8/13/10

A California school district sued by a former sixth-grade student who was asked to remove an anti-abortion T-shirt has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the suit.

Attorneys for Tiffany Amador said Friday that officials at Merced's McSwain Union Elementary School called the T-shirt disruptive when she wore it in April 2008.

The shirt showed pictures of an apparent fetus and said "ABORTION: growing... growing... gone."

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Judgment Vindicates Calif. Student Punished for Pro-Life T-Shirt" posted at LifeSiteNews.com 8/13/10

Los Angeles attorney William J. Becker, Jr., of The Becker Law Firm, assisted by the Thomas More Law Center, filed suit after school officials barred Tiffany Amador from wearing her pro-life T-shirt at McSwain Union Elementary School, a kindergarten through 8th grade school located in Merced, north of Fresno.

On April 29, 2008, Amador wore a shirt sponsored by the American Life League, which annually sponsors a National Pro-Life T-shirt Week. The shirt, which was given to her by her church, prominently featured the word “ABORTION” over a series of panels, two of which depicted endoscopic pictures of a baby developing in the womb and the third filled in with black. The caption read, “growing…growing…gone.” Amador testified in the case that she wore the shirt to school because she wanted other students to known that “abortion is wrong.”

The school claimed the images of the baby were “disruptive” to the school environment because of their “graphic nature” - but Amador's lawyers say the school could not explain what made them so graphic that they would have caused a substantial disruption. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that only a substantial disruption would merit censure by a public school.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.