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Kindergartner's Suspension Appealed To Supreme Court
SAYREVILLE, N.J. — Lawyers representing the family of a boy suspended from kindergarten after a playground game involving make-believe guns have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case. The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit group focused on First Amendment and religious-freedom cases, announced the appeal on Sept. 18. According to the Rutherford Institute, four kindergarten boys at Wilson Elementary School were playing cops and robbers during recess in March 2000, using their fingers as guns. The boy represented by the institute allegedly said, "I have a bazooka, and I'm going to shoot you." Another student told a teacher, and the four boys were each suspended for three days. The Rutherford Institute filed a lawsuit, seeking to have the suspension expunged from one boy's record. The institute argues the boy's constitutional rights to free speech, procedural due process and equal protection of law were violated by the school. But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, dismissing the lawsuit this June. Institute President John W. Whitehead said that when public schools think children "playing cops and robbers on the playground are engaged in threatening and dangerous activity, one wonders whether it is the children or the adults who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality." Dennis Fyffe, superintendent for Sayreville's school district, did not return a telephone message in time for this story. |