Fifth-Grader Suspended for Wearing anti-Obama T-Shirt

From Dan Slater at the Wall Street Law Blog:

…11-year-old Daxx Dalton…has been suspended for refusing to remove a homemade t-shirt that reads: “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.” Dalton’s suspension was reportedly for willful disobedience and defiance, not for wearing the shirt.

The response from Dalton — a fifth grader at Aurora Frontier K-8 School who wore the shirt on a day when students were asked to to show their patriotism by wearing red, white and blue — demonstrated some lawyer promise: “They’re taking away my right of freedom of speech,” he said. “If I have the right to wear this shirt I’m going to use it. And if the only way to use it is get suspended, then I’m going to get suspended.”

E. Christopher Murray, a partner at New York law firm Reisman, Peirez and Reisman and the president of the New York chapter of the Civil Liberties Union, was quoted by the WSJ Blog as saying:

“Students have a constitutional right to express their opinions about politics, and this t-shirt was not vulgar or anything other than a political statement. While the courts have recently cut back on student’s rights of expression, this case clearly seems to be an illegal curtailment of this student’s rights. “