Dean McGee says Liberty Justice Center is suing the Davidson County Board of Education on behalf of 16-year-old Davidson High School student Christian McGhee.
"Last month during English class, there was a discussion about the word aliens," the attorney explains. "Christian raised his hand and asked, 'Are you talking about illegal aliens who need green cards, or space aliens?'"
Another male student, who is of Latino descent, jokingly said he was going to fight Christian.
"The teacher, not knowing what to do, called the administrators," McGee reports. "Both boys said, 'This is ridiculous. We were joking around,' and from there, the administrators insisted that Christian's words were offensive and were racial and should be taken seriously."
Christian was then suspended for three days, which administrators claim is standard punishment for using a racial slur. But Christian was not given an opportunity to appeal, and McGee says the school actually "rejected his mother's pleas for appeal."
"They have now branded him with a racially biased comment as a basis for his suspension on his permanent record," the attorney notes. "We're suing to rectify that."
The federal case is filed in North Carolina, and Liberty Justice Center anticipates making a subsequent filing to accelerate its ability to get before a judge so that Christian may have this removed from his record before he starts applying to colleges.
"We should all care about how public schools disciple our children," says McGee. "If public schools are interjecting their own viewpoints into the disciplinary process, it puts our kids at risk to be branded, in this case, as racist " for asking a question that was "racially neutral" and did not cause actual harm or offense to anyone.
