ProPublica is a nonprofit news company that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter focused on fraud across the country, and get it delivered to your inbox every week.
Two families have sued the East Tennessee School District in federal court, accusing school officials of violating the rights of students who call police under Tennessee law that requires harsh punishment for threats of gang violence.
The 11-year-old boy was arrested at the restaurant despite denying the threat. A 13-year-old boy with disabilities was handcuffed after he said his backpack would explode, even though it only contained a stuffed animal.
ProPublica and WPLN News reported on both cases last year as part of a larger investigation into how new state laws, sometimes based on rumors and misunderstandings, lead to children being kicked out of school and arrested on felony charges. I wrote an article about it. Our reporting in Hamilton County shows that police arrested and handcuffed children, even though school officials characterized most of the incidents as “low-level” with “no evidence of a motive.” It turned out that he had been arrested and taken into custody. The students arrested were disproportionately Black and had disabilities compared to the percentage of these groups in the district’s overall population.
The lawsuit filed this month in federal court in Chattanooga against the Hamilton County school district is two of several filed against school officials in Tennessee in response to the threat of mass assault laws. Supporters hope to push through the law changes in parliament, which begins this month. But the law’s sponsor, Republican Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, told ProPublica and WPLN News that “we are not considering making any changes to the law.”
“The policy of not even allowing the words ‘shoot’ or ‘gun’ to be uttered was an unconstitutional expedient reaction by the Legislature that allowed school administrators to make hasty decisions regarding student discipline.” says one of the lawsuits filed Thursday. Representing an 11-year-old autistic student who was arrested at a restaurant.
When another student asked him last September if he was going to shoot up the school, the 11-year-old boy said, “Yes,” according to the complaint. The school reported the comment to police, who tracked him down and arrested him.
Another federal lawsuit, filed Jan. 3, involves a 13-year-old student with a “severe intellectual disability” who told a teacher last fall that she looked inside his backpack. He reportedly told them that the school would explode. The teacher only found the stuffed animal in the backpack, but school officials reported the incident to police anyway.
Highlights of this series
“Even though there was clearly no real threat, and in the context of Doe’s intellectual and emotional disability as a student, Doe was isolated and handcuffed by police. [student resource officer]He was then transferred to a juvenile detention center,” the complaint states. (Both lawsuits refer to the children involved as John Doe to preserve their anonymity.) The school later said the student’s behavior was a sign of autism, according to documents included in the lawsuit. I decided.
Both lawsuits allege that district officials violated state law by allowing the physical restraint of a student receiving special education services and failing to follow proper procedures before prompting the student’s arrest. Both lawsuits say the school district “violated Doe’s First Amendment rights and did so with deliberate indifference.”
The juvenile case against both students was dismissed.
The Hamilton County Schools Superintendent referred requests for comment to the school board’s attorney, citing pending litigation. The attorney did not immediately respond to a subsequent request for comment. The school district has not yet filed a response to either lawsuit.
Disability rights advocates fought for a broader exemption that would prevent police from prosecuting children whose disabilities could be seen as threatening behavior.
“What we’re uncovering in all of these lawsuits is exactly what we were trying to educate people on last year,” said Zoe Jamail, Tennessee Disability Rights Policy Coordinator.
Instead, lawmakers only excluded people with “intellectual disabilities” but failed to address students with other disabilities that affect communication and behavior. The law does not specify how police should determine whether a child has an intellectual disability before filing charges. In fact, according to our reporting, police arrested a 13-year-old boy in this case even though school records showed he had an intellectual disability.
Disability Rights Tennessee and other groups plan to push for changes to the law this Congress to protect more students with disabilities, especially when the threat is not credible. “The question is how can we actually better support these young people in the school environment and use compassion and reason instead of reacting and interpreting the law in ways that are not actually rational? It should be about how we can deal with these incidents,” Jameel said.
A federal judge in November allowed a lawsuit against a suburban Nashville school board to proceed. Two parents have filed a lawsuit against the Williamson County Board of Education on behalf of their children, claiming they were wrongfully suspended and arrested for making threats of gang violence at school.
Judge Aleta Trauger ruled that the family had a “plausible argument” that the school board violated the student’s due process rights by suspending him.
A 13-year-old with autism has been arrested after his backpack caused fear. Inside was only his stuffed rabbit.
The 11-year-old boy denied the threat and was allowed to return to school. Tennessee State Police arrested him anyway.
Part of the lawsuit involved a middle school student known as “HM.” After being teased by her friends in a group chat for looking “Mexican,” she jokingly texted her friend, “I’m going to kill all Mexicans on Thursday.” The school board argued in legal filings that state law requires authorities to suspend students and call police, regardless of whether the threat is serious or not. School board officials declined further comment in response to requests from ProPublica and WPLN.
Trauger questioned the Williamson County Board of Education’s legal analysis, saying it “leads to absurdity.”
“An act, here the improbability of a middle school student murdering all Mexicans, should influence the threat analysis,” she wrote. “For example, what if HM threatened to cast magical killing spells on a bunch of people? What if HM threatened to fly to the moon and use space lasers to shoot people?”
She denied the Williamson County Board of Education’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit outright. The lawsuit is pending.
