Overlawyered » schools

Update: charges dropped against Kiera Wilmot

Walter Olson — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:27:23 +0000

Authorities have dropped charges against the Florida teen “who was expelled and charged with two felonies after conducting an unauthorized but harmless science experiment on the grounds of her school.” [Jesse Walker, earlier] And in the feel-good story of the day, former NASA astronaut Homer Hickam “awarded Kiera a scholarship to attend the United States Advanced Space Academy (ASA), a branch of the famous Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.” [Black Youth Project]

Tags: Florida, schools, science and scientists, zero tolerance

Update: charges dropped against Kiera Wilmot is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Schools roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:08:46 +0000

More commentators weigh in on the truly horrible new federal campus speech and discipline code [Harvey Silverglate /Juliana DeVries, Minding the Campus; Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic; Will Creeley, HuffPo; Scott Greenfield; Reason TV; my two cents] More: Greg Lukianoff, WSJ.
Feds: states must impose extensive disability-rights regime — including obligations to accept students with difficult accommodation needs — on private/religious schools participating in voucher programs [Bagenstos, Disability Law; Ramesh Ponnuru (noting that loading new regulatory burdens onto private and religious schools may not be displeasing to school choice opponents in the administration)] NYC’s famous selective/performance schools obliged to take special ed kids who can’t meet standard entrance or audition requirements [Inside Schools]
Volunteer-led school band survives shutdown attempt by Oregon teachers’ union [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
AFT: donate to groups that oppose our aims, and we’ll see that you pay [Jason Bedrick, Cato]
Chicago: “Teachers union plans to file civil rights suits to stop school closings” [Chicago Tribune]
Newly passed Minnesota “anti-bullying” law will expand state control over local schools [Pioneer Press] Court proceedings over alleged taunting and insults proliferate under New Jersey’s law [Star-Ledger via Reason]
“Graduates, your ambition is the problem” [Roger Pilon on the president's Ohio State commencement address]

Tags: Barack Obama, bullying, Chicago, colleges and universities, disability & schools, labor unions, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, schools

Schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Michigan teachers’ union fails in lawsuit to block dues change

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:11:08 +0000

A Sixth Circuit panel declines to strike down a state law under which public schools will no longer withhold union dues from teachers’ salaries. The Michigan Education Association had claimed that Public Act 53 interfered with its First Amendment right to speak. [David Shepardson, Detroit News]

Tags: First Amendment, labor unions, Michigan, schools, Sixth Circuit

Michigan teachers’ union fails in lawsuit to block dues change is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Florida: Teen Faces Felony Charges for Science Experiment

Walter Olson — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:30:35 +0000

“No one was hurt. There’s no sign that [Kiera] Wilmot was up to something malevolent. The kid’s own principal [at Bartow High School] thinks this wasn’t anything more than an experiment, and he says she didn’t try to cover up what she had done. What punishment did you think she received? A stern talking-to? A day or two of after-school detention? Maybe she’ll have to help clean up the lab for a week? Nope. The budding chemist has been kicked out of school and charged with a couple of felonies.” [Jesse Walker]

More: “Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the Stuff They’ve Blown Up” [Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times] Similarly: Ashutosh Jogalekar, Scientific American.

Tags: Florida, schools, science and scientists, zero tolerance

Florida: Teen Faces Felony Charges for Science Experiment is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:05:19 +0000

More on Mayor Michael Nutter’s investigation of Philadelphia magazine for sin of committing unwelcome journalism [Mark Hemingway, Weekly Standard, earlier]
Standing on principle: liberal speech scholars defend right to use “gruesome images” in abortion protests [Volokh]
GreenTech Automotive files libel suit against Franklin Center’s Watchdog.org [Jim Geraghty]
“Dear Mr. Sahota… Your pompous yet feckless bluster distinguishes you.” [Ken at Popehat, Lesley Kemp case]
“Plaintiff Who Keeps Suing Search Engines Still Not Clear on Streisand Effect” [Lowering the Bar, earlier here, etc.]
“Government Can’t Condition Federal Contracts on Giving Up Constitutional Rights” [Ilya Shapiro on Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International; SCOTUSBlog] Speaking of compulsory sex positions, the problems with an Ohio legislative proposal on sex-ed are many, among them that government isn’t constitutionally free to bar hiring teachers of whose views it disapproves [Chris Geidner, BuzzFeed]
Partial fee award to attorneys Paul Alan Levy and Cathy Gellis in case where attorney Charles Carreon menaced blogger [Michael Masnick/TechDirt, Paul Alan Levy, Popehat, earlier here and here]

Tags: free speech, online speech, Philadelphia, schools, search engines

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Schools roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 04:05:07 +0000

Appalling: pursuing the logic of equality arguments, prominent constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has proposed abolishing private/religious/home K-12 schooling [Eugene Volokh, Rick Garnett, Marc DeGirolami]
How wrong is the NRA on school security? So wrong that even Marian Wright Edelman makes more sense [Gene Healy]
Schools, marriage, and self-replicating elites: Ross Douthat tells some secrets of the NYT-reading class [NYT]
Critics flay Connecticut bill to require school mental health checkups of children [Raising Hale]
“How the Anti-Bully Movement is Hurting Kids: An Interview with Bully Nation’s Susan Porter” [Tracy Oppenheimer, Reason]
Montgomery County, Maryland pols concerned some public schools might become unfairly good [DC Examiner] Also in Maryland, there’s a push to emulate a truly bad New Jersey idea by shifting the burden of proof onto schools in special education disputes [WaPo]
Telephone frustration in New Haven: “How public schools drive us away…” [Mark Oppenheimer]

Tags: bullying, Connecticut, disability & schools, Erwin Chemerinsky, guns, Maryland, New Jersey, psychiatry, schools

Schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Hans Bader on the Maryland cyber-bullying bill

Walter Olson — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:10:07 +0000

He follows up on my criticism from yesterday:

Under the First Amendment, the government has far less power to restrict speech when it acts as a sovereign (such as when it criminally prosecutes people for their speech) than when it uses non-criminal disciplinary tools to regulate speech in its own government offices or (in certain circumstances) the public schools. …

… Maryland’s law restricts speech in society generally, by both minors and adults. The government obviously cannot rely on public school officials’ custodial and tutelary power over student speech to restrict the speech of adult non-students, much less their speech outside the schools. … The fact that speech is emotionally distressing may be a factor in whether to discipline a student for it under school rules, but it is not a justification for criminal prosecution, or even, generally speaking, a tort lawsuit. …

Activists claim bullying is an “epidemic” and a “pandemic.” But in reality, the rate of bullying has steadily diminished in the nation’s schools.

More: Mike Masnick at TechDirt criticizes the new law and kindly quotes my piece.

Tags: bullying, Maryland, online speech, schools

Hans Bader on the Maryland cyber-bullying bill is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Cleaning supplies in the classroom? Your papers, please

Walter Olson — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:17:25 +0000

One of Lenore Skenazy’s readers, a kindergarten teacher in Wisconsin, says the list of things not allowed in the classroom without a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) at her school includes dish soap and baby wipes [Free-Range Kids; MSDS for dish soap from lakeland.edu and for baby wipes from schoolhealth.com]

Tags: environment, schools

Cleaning supplies in the classroom? Your papers, please is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Guns roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 04:06:39 +0000

Defeat of proposed assault-weapons ban is setback for demagogy [Taranto] “If You Don’t Support an ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban, You Hate Children and Want Them to Die” [Jacob Sullum on New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica]
New York snitchline offers $500 rewards for turning in neighbor in possession of unlicensed gun [USA Today] “Andrew Cuomo Realizes He Mandated Gun Magazines That Don’t Exist” [Sullum]
“Colorado’s New Gun Controls Promise Dubious Public Safety Benefits and Lurking Legal Perils” [Sullum] Democratic sponsor “didn’t realize that her bill would outlaw practically every magazine currently for sale in the state” [Daily Caller] In empty gesture, inevitably to be pre-empted by PLCAA, some Colorado Dems sought to legislate liability for “assault weapon” owners, sellers and makers for crime [Denver Post, Daily Caller]
Maryland state senator J.B. Jennings introduces bill restraining school discipline of students who simulate “guns” by way of pointing fingers, nibbling breakfast pastries into shapes, etc. [Easton Star-Democrat, Joanne Jacobs, earlier]
“Survey: Federally licensed firearms retailers overwhelmingly oppose ‘Universal Background Checks’” [Daily Caller]
“Science and gun violence: why is the research so weak?” [Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing]
Hope springs eternal on legal mandates for personalized guns, though even the Violence Policy Center doesn’t think much of the idea [San Francisco Chronicle]

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Colorado, guns, Maryland, schools

Guns roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Schools roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:08:16 +0000

More on court’s enjoining Alabama House from sending schools bill to governor [Joshua Dunn, earlier]
Connecticut mom’s fibbing to get kid into better school district, interpreted as theft of services, contributes to 12-year sentence (also predicated on four unrelated charges of drug sale and possession) [WFSB]
Student speech hit by one-two punch: post-Newtown hysteria, campaign against bullying [Hans Bader, more]
Turn Pell Grants into entitlements? Has the Gates Foundation taken leave of its senses? [Neal McCluskey, Cato]
“The Dubious Case for Regulating Day Care” [John Ross, Reason, responding to Washington Post coverage of Virginia push]
Kansas lawmakers push back against court’s power grab on edubucks mandate [K. C. Star, earlier]
“Call to Ditch Red Tape on Playtime Safety” [U.K. TESConnect via Free-Range Kids]

Tags: Alabama, bullying, colleges and universities, Kansas, recreation, schools, Virginia

Schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system