A federal judge has denied re-entry to suspended and expelled Park Hill South High School student-athletes who posted a fake slavery petition on Change.org and Snap Chat that suggested restarting servitude among black people.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough dismissed the parent plaintiff’s motion for temporary restraining order or in the alternative for a preliminary injunction, which would have required Park Hill South School District (Park Hill SD) to readmit the four multi-racial football players.
“Defendants argue that they have mitigated any harm resulting from the suspensions or expulsion," Bough wrote in the order. “[Park Hill SD] has allowed the Plaintiffs to coordinate their online work with the district’s curriculum and even paid for a homebound teacher to work with the Plaintiffs, thus maintaining connections to the building. Defendants continue to provide online schooling until Plaintiffs are eligible for readmission or eligible to apply for readmission.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, the student’s parents sued Park Hill SD last year in the Eastern District of Missouri alleging failure to train/inadequate training, violations of the First Amendment, due process, and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution and asking for their children to be reinstated and have all traces of the incident erased from their records.
“It is not good for our overarching society when children are not in school being educated and socialized together,” said Dr. Nicole Price, who has a doctorate in educational leadership and has lived in the Park Hill School District since 2011. “What do you think happens to a kid who is not in school? It leads to a school-to-prison pipeline. So, I am a fervent supporter of restorative practices in schools.”
On Sept. 30, Bough granted the plaintiff-parents voluntarily dismissal of First Amendment rights violations and failure to train and supervise accusations but the litigation is proceeding with allegations of due process and equal protection violations against the school district.
“While I do not think joking about some of the nation's most horrific history is acceptable, what I will say is children do make mistakes and when children make mistakes, we cannot allow those mistakes to be lifelong impediments,” Price told the St. Louis Record. “It runs the risk of being that when you expel a student for a full calendar year.”
Although Bough did not order the students to be reinstated in school, he did rule that the punishment was harsh.
"It wasn't like they killed somebody," Price added. "I think the kinds of things that you kick a kid out of school for a year and they don't have an opportunity to restore are the kinds of things that would be considered criminal and that you need to go to Juvenile Detention Center over but even in Juvenile Detention Center, they go to class every day. So, this is almost worse than that."