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Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 10:44 am

WTR wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:27 pm I had a classmate more than 50 years ago who stood upside the classroom every morning during the pledge due to religious reasons. No one cried foul. People need to get a life.

The atmosphere a half century ago was not remotely close to what it is today. There's a concerted effort to destroy America from within and showing contempt for the very institution that allows you do descent erodes the foundation of this country.

The SCOTUS has ruled that students in school do not have the same First Amendment Rights as adults. The judge should have thrown the case out and sanctioned the family and their attorney for filing a frivolous suit.

Chas.

I completely agree with the sentiment. I fought in combat for this country and for the right of people that I completely disagree with to act like complete punks by disrespecting everything I believe in. I lost good friends who died making sure that we all have these and other rights. And I also agree with the SCOTUS ruling that students should not have all of the same constitutional rights as adults. Of course in this case, the student was also an adult, which does complicate that point a bit.

But I also think that any infringement on student's rights should be justified by a necessity for the safety of the rest of the students (in the case of locker searches, etc), or for the need to have an effective learning environment. If a student wants to quietly register their disagreement with something by silently sitting instead of standing, I don't think they should be disciplined by the school. As long as they are not disruptive. I don't know whether this case met that criteria.

Given the left leaning nature of schools in this country, the principles here are important, as the specific situation could easily be very different than the issue in this case. I am thinking of the very real possibility that a school might call for students to stand in honor of illegal immigrants who are "unfairly being victimized by not being allowed to enter the US at will." If that were the situation, and a school expelled a student who refused to participate, I definitely would not want to see that student's case thrown out and their family sanctioned. The key to me is whether the student is being disruptive of the learning environment as a whole.