Great moments in school-speech litigation

Ohio: “A family with an extensive history of legal action against a number of school districts and municipalities has filed a $1 million civil lawsuit against Middletown City Schools. Orlando Bethel — who refers to himself as a fire and brimstone preacher in court documents, and his wife, Glynis — filed the action Friday in Cincinnati federal court after one of their three children, Zoe, wore a T-shirt at the high school proclaiming ‘god hates (expletive)’ and ‘repent or burn in hell.'” [Dayton Daily News]

6 Comments

  • Hey hey – I think my old “Kill a Commie for Christ” t-shirt might fit the kid nowadays…

  • I wonder where I left my “Nuke the Gay Whales For Jesus” t-shirt.

  • Loser Pays, please.

  • I’ll up the ante on ‘loser pay’… file three frivolous suits and then, after you pay the winning side’s legal bills, you get the needle. The only way to stop serial abusers is to stop them.

  • There is a solution to all this controversy about school T-shirts:
    (1) Schools should have a policy of no message T-shirts.
    (2) Introduce school uniforms. That’s what we have here in Australia, and we never have any of these stupid controversies about school speech.

  • “I’ll up the ante on ‘loser pay’… file three frivolous suits and then, after you pay the winning side’s legal bills, you get the needle.”

    I’ll up it further. You loose, you get to face the penalty you wanted to see the other party pay yourself, to the other party, as well as his legal fees in full.

    So if you’re trying to extort a billion from some company and you loose, you’re going to be hit for a billion yourself.