A junior at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua has sued the school district over its decision to issue him a three-day suspension for his use of an anti-gay slur in rap music recorded off campus, arguing that the school's sanction violated his First Amendment rights.<\/a><\/p>\nThe 17-year-old student, who says he is a member of the LGBTQ community, "occasionally freestyles rap lyrics with his friends." He devised the lyrics to his composition at a friend's house one night in 2022.<\/p>\n
His freestyle rap contained the words "f***ot" and "twink," which the lawsuit defines as \u201ca gay man who is young, slim, and looks like a boy," citing the Cambridge Dictionary.<\/p>\n
After the friend posted their rap on SoundCloud, apparently without the student's knowledge, Horace Greeley received two anonymous complaints. …<\/p>\n
In his lawsuit, the student argues that his use of the slur was ironic and was meant to "reclaim a word that has been used as a slur against him and the LGBTQ community in general."<\/p>\n
Further, the tawdry themes in the freestyle rap were "intentionally over-the top parodies of rap music\u2019s obsession with violence, crime, and sexuality."<\/p>\n
The lawsuit additionally invokes a new legal precedent granting greater free speech protections to student conduct off-campus. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. that schools have a considerably narrower interest in regulating student speech that occurs off-campus.<\/p>\n
There's a bit more if you hit the link.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He uses bad language and gets suspended? Schools would be pretty empty if they suspended everyone who uses bad language while singing a rap song. This is so absurd. The school will lose. A junior at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua has sued the school district over its decision to issue him a three-day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5012,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/5012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}