A multi-racial group of student-athletes who were punished for posting a fake slavery petition on Change.org has sued a Kansas City school district alleging violations of their civil rights.
Four Park Hill South High School football players named their principal, the Park Hill School District, the Park Hill School District Board of Education, the district’s superintendent, and the district’s director of student services as defendants after one student was expelled over the incident and three others were suspended.
“The punishment is setting a precedent,” said Dr. Nicole Price, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership and has lived in the Park Hill School District since 2011. “Expulsions and long-term suspensions in the state of Missouri are reserved for weapons violations and drug possession for the intent to use and the intent to sell. So, this is outside of the traditional punishment for this act.”
Causes of action include violations of the First Amendment, due process, and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.
“On September 16, after school hours while on a school bus on its way to a late-afternoon away football team, Plaintiff A (who identifies as biracial Black and Brazilian) bantered with Student X (who is Black) about slavery and needing a job, which both found humorous,” wrote attorney Arthur Benson II in the Nov. 12 complaint. “Plaintiff A drafted a “petition” for Change.Org entitled “Start slavery again.” Before posting it, Plaintiff A showed it to Student X and others seated near them on the bus. All laughingly approved and Plaintiff A posted it on Change.Org.”
Eleven people “liked” the petition while others shared it but the students interviewed who participated said they thought the petition was a joke, according to media reports.
“The nation has been experiencing a racial reckoning for the last 19 months for some of us and that always trickles down to the kiddos,” Price told the St. Louis Record. “When you open up, for school districts, the ability to be institutions of punishment rather than institutions of restorative justice, what happens is that ultimately ends up being bad for black kids and so I am very concerned.”
Benson declined to comment but his lawsuit revealed that the students were 9th graders who subsequently posted the self-created slavery petition on the team’s Snapchat.
“There are some people who think these kids are just intentionally mean and consciously trying to be harmful but that is just not true,” Price said. “This was truly a case of ignorance. These four kiddos collectively had the equivalent of four lessons solely during Black History Month that had nothing to do with slavery, highlighted the dream aspect of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr and the activist aspect of Rosa Parks. That's it.”
The students are asking to not only be reinstated but also to have all traces of the incident erased from their records.
“Plaintiffs found themselves in a school culture that was infused with frequent casual use of racial and ethnic epithets and slurs; demeaning names were often used both in jest and in earnest; “unclean” Hip Hop music with frequent epithets and racial slurs was often played loudly in the locker room; friendly banter about racial topics was frequent; school district adults, including coaches, only occasionally asked the ninth-graders to “watch their language” but mostly condoned heavily racialized interactions among the members of the ninth-grade football team,” Benson stated in the pleading.
The plaintiffs seek actual damages, nominal damages, punitive or exemplary damages.
"What's at stake is the work around sharing the history of race, racism and racial terror in this country is probably not going to happen to the level that it needs to with children and unfortunately people end up learning these lessons much later in life, or if they don't, then they end up in roles where they just reinforce the trauma," Price added.