Two families have sued an East Tennessee school district in federal court, alleging that school officials violated students’ rights when they called police under a Tennessee law that provides harsh penalties for threats of mass violence.
One is 11 years old was arrested in the restaurant even though he denied his threat. A 13-year-old with disabilities handcuffed for saying his backpack was going to explodealthough there was only a stuffed animal inside.
ProPublica and WPLN News wrote about both cases last year as part of a larger investigation into how new state laws lead to kids being kicked out of school and arrested on felony chargessometimes due to rumors and misunderstandings. Our reporting in Hamilton County found that police were arresting, handcuffing and detaining children even though school officials called most of the incidents “low-level” with “no evidence of a motive.” Arrested students were disproportionately black and with disabilities compared to the overall share of these groups in the district’s population.
The lawsuits against the Hamilton County School District, filed this month in federal court in Chattanooga, are two of several filed against school officials in Tennessee in response to the mass threats of violence law. Human rights activists hope to get the law changed in the legislative session that starts this month. But the bill’s Republican sponsor, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, told ProPublica and WPLN News that he “is not going to change the law.”
“The zero-tolerance policy for even uttering the words ‘shoot’ or ‘gun’ is an unconstitutional response by the legislature and has forced school administrators to make rash decisions about student discipline,” one of lawsuits filed Thursday on behalf of an 11-year-old autistic student arrested at a restaurant.
Asked by another student last September if he was going to shoot up the school, the 11-year-old replied, “Yes,” the lawsuit states. The school reported the comment to the police, who tracked him down and arrested him.
The second federal lawsuitfiled Jan. 3, involves a 13-year-old student with a “severe intellectual disability” who told his teacher last fall that the school would “explode” if she looked in his backpack. The teacher found only a stuffed animal in the backpack, but the school management still reported the incident to the police.
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“Despite the apparent absence of any actual threat and in the context of Doe being an intellectually and emotionally disabled student, Doe was isolated, handcuffed (by a student resource officer) and transported to a juvenile detention center,” the lawsuit states. (In both lawsuits, the children involved are referred to as John Doe to preserve their anonymity.) The school later determined that the student’s behavior was a manifestation of his autism, according to documents included in the lawsuit.
Both lawsuits allege the district violated state law by allowing the physical restraints of students receiving special education services and failing to follow due process before facilitating the students’ arrests. The school district “violated Doe’s First Amendment rights and did so with deliberate indifference,” both suits say.
Both students were dismissed from juvenile court.
The superintendent of Hamilton County Schools referred a request for comment to the school board’s attorney, citing pending litigation. The attorney did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for comment. The district has not yet filed a response to either lawsuit.
Disability rights advocates have fought for a broader exception in the law that would prevent police from charging children who, as a result of their disability, might say or do something that could be interpreted as a threat.
“What we’re seeing as a result of all these lawsuits is what we’ve been trying to communicate for the past year,” said Zoe Jamail, policy coordinator for Tennessee Disability Rights.
Instead, lawmakers excluded only people with “intellectual disabilities,” leaving out students with other disabilities that affect their communication or behavior. The law does not specify how the police must determine whether a child has an intellectual disability before charging them. In fact, our report found that police arrested a 13-year-old as part of a lawsuit, even though school records showed he had an intellectual disability.
Tennessee Disability Rights and other organizations plan to push for an amendment to the law this legislative session to protect more students with disabilities, especially if the threat is not credible. “The question really has to be how can we better support these young people in the school environment, and how can we treat these cases with compassion and intelligence, rather than reacting and interpreting the law in a way that’s not entirely reasonable,” Jamail said. .
A federal judge allowed the claim against the Nashville Suburban School Board to move forward in November. Two parents are suing the Williamson County school board on behalf of their children, claiming they were wrongfully suspended and arrested after they were accused of making threats of mass violence at school.
Judge Aletta Trauger ruled that the families have a “plausible claim” that the school board violated the students’ due process rights by suspending them.
Part of the trial involved a high school student referred to as “HM.” Teased by friends in a group chat that she “looks Mexican”, she jokingly wrote to her friends: “Thursday we’re killing all Mexicans.” The school board argued in a legal filing that state law requires officials to suspend the student and call police, regardless of whether the threat was serious. A spokesperson for the school board declined further comment in response to a request from ProPublica and WPLN.
Trauger questioned the Williamson County School Board’s analysis of the law, which she said “leads to the absurd.”
“The implausibility of the actions — here, a high school student killing all Mexicans — should factor into the threat analysis,” she wrote. “What if, for example, HM threatened to cast a magical spell on a large group of people? What if HM threatened to fly to the moon and shoot people with a space laser?”
She denied a motion by the Williamson County School Board to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. The lawsuit is pending.
