The family of a Black high school student in Texas on Saturday filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state’s governor and attorney general over his ongoing suspension by his school district for his hairstyle.
Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since Aug. 31 at the Houston-area school. School officials say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.
George’s mother, Darresha George, and the family’s attorney deny the teenager’s hairstyle violates the dress code, saying his hair is neatly tied in twisted dreadlocks on top of his head.
The lawsuit accuses Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton of failing to enforce the CROWN Act, a new state law outlawing racial discrimination based on hairstyles. Darryl George’s supporters allege the ongoing suspension by the Barbers Hill Independent School District violates the law, which took effect Sept. 1.
The lawsuit alleges Abbott and Paxton, in their official duties, have failed to protect Darryl George’s constitutional rights against discrimination and against violations of his freedom of speech and expression. Darryl George “should be permitted to wear his hair in the manner in which he wears it ... because the so-called neutral grooming policy has no close association with learning or safety and when applied, disproportionately impacts Black males,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in Houston federal court by Darryl George’s mother, is the latest legal action taken related to the suspension.
On Tuesday, Darresha George and her attorney filed a formal complaint with the Texas Education Agency, alleging Darryl George is being harassed and mistreated by school district officials over his hair and that his in-school suspension is in violation of the CROWN Act.
They allege that during his suspension, Darryl George is forced to sit for eight hours on a stool and that he’s being denied the hot free lunch he’s qualified to receive. The agency is investigating the complaint.
Darresha George said she was recently hospitalized after a series of panic and anxiety attacks brought on from stress related to her son’s suspension.
On Wednesday, the school district filed its own lawsuit in state court asking a judge to clarify whether its dress code restrictions limiting student hair length for boys violates the CROWN Act.
Barbers Hill Superintendent Greg Poole has said he believes the dress code is legal and that it teaches students to conform as a sacrifice benefiting everyone.
The school district said it would not enhance the current punishment against Darryl George while it waits for a ruling on its lawsuit.
The CROWN Act, an acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” is intended to prohibit race-based hair discrimination and bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, dreadlocks, twists or Bantu knots. Texas is one of 24 states that have enacted a version of the act.
Five former Memphis police officers were charged Tuesday with federal civil rights violations in the beating death of Tyre Nichols as they continue to fight second-degree murder charges in state courts arising from the killing.
Tadarrius Bean, Desmond Mills, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin and Justin Smith were indicted in U.S. District Court in Memphis. The four-count indictment charges them with deprivation of rights under the color of law through excessive force and failure to intervene, and through deliberate indifference; conspiracy to witness tampering; and obstruction of justice through witness tampering.
The charges come nine months after the violent beating during a Jan. 7 traffic stop near Nichols’ Memphis home, in which they punched, kicked and slugged the 29-year-old with a baton as he yelled for his mother. Nichols died at a hospital three days later. The five former officers, all Black like Nichols, have pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder and other alleged offenses in the case.
“We all heard Mr. Nichols cry out for his mother and say ‘I’m just trying to go home,’” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a video statement after the indictment. “Tyre Nichols should be alive today.”
U.S. Attorney Kevin Ritz in West Tennessee said at an afternoon news briefing that the state and federal cases are on separate tracks. Ritz declined to predict how quickly they would proceed.
Kristen Clarke, who leads the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division, said at the appearance that the five former officers used excessive force, failed to advise medical personnel about Nichols’ injuries and conspired to cover up their misconduct.
“In our country, no one is above the law,” she said, adding she met earlier Tuesday with Nichols’ mother and stepfather. Caught on police video, the Nichols beating was one in a string of violent encounters between police and Black people that sparked protests and renewed debate about police brutality and police reform in the U.S.
Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said she was surprised that the federal charges “happened so quickly.” The investigation that led to the indictment was announced in the weeks after the Jan. 7 beating death.
A federal judge has struck down a Texas law requiring age verification and health warnings to view pornographic websites and blocked the state attorney general’s office from enforcing it.
In a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Ezra agreed with claims that House Bill 1181, which was signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in June, violates free speech rights and is overbroad and vague.
The state attorney general’s office, which is defending the law, immediately filed notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The lawsuit was filed Aug. 4 by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry and a person identified as Jane Doe and described as an adult entertainer on various adult sites, including Pornhub.
Judge Ezra also said the law, which was to take effect Friday, raises privacy concerns because a permissible age verification is using a traceable government-issued identification and the government has access to and is not required to delete the data.
“People will be particularly concerned about accessing controversial speech when the state government can log and track that access,” Ezra wrote. “By verifying information through government identification, the law will allow the government to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives.”
Ezra said Texas has a legitimate goal of protecting children from online sexual material, but noted other measures, including blocking and filtering software, exist.
“These methods are more effective and less restrictive in terms of protecting minors from adult content,” Ezra wrote. The judge also found the law unconstitutionally compels speech by requiring adult sites to post health warnings they dispute — that pornography is addictive, impairs mental development and increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation and child sexual abuse images.
“The disclosures state scientific findings as a matter of fact, when in reality, they range from heavily contested to unsupported by the evidence,” Ezra wrote.
The Texas law is one of several similar age verification laws passed in other states, including Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah and Louisiana.
A teenager who killed four students at his Michigan high school in 2021 was like a “feral child,” deeply neglected by his parents during crucial years and mentally ill, a psychologist testified Tuesday at a hearing to determine if the mass shooter will get a life prison sentence.
Ethan Crumbley’s lawyers also played disturbing videos from jail showing the 17-year-old in deep distress as deputies restrained him while he wailed. In one incident, his head is completely covered with a hood. No dates were disclosed.
“Why didn’t you stop it? I’m sorry. ... Stop it, God, why?” he said. “A number of my clients have had issues with the law,” said King, who has testified in many homicide cases. “Through psychotherapy and support, they’ve been able to make progress. ... Ethan’s brain is still maturing.”
Crumbley pleaded guilty to murder, terrorism and other charges in a shooting that killed four students and wounded seven others at Oxford High School, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Detroit.
Because of his age — 15 at the time — the shooter can’t automatically be a given life sentence. Oakland County Judge Kwame Rowe first must consider the shooter’s maturity, mental health, unstable family life and other factors set by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He still can order a life sentence, but it would be a rare outcome for a teen. Crumbley otherwise would face a minimum sentence somewhere between 25 years and 40 years in prison, followed by eligibility for parole. A decision isn’t expected Tuesday, the third and likely final day of the hearing
King said he spent more than 20 hours with the shooter during several meetings, interviewing him and running him through a series of psychological tests. He also reviewed the teen’s dark journal entries and text messages.
King disclosed for the first time that the boy believed that a gun was going to be found in his backpack on the day of the shooting when he was sent to the office for drawing violent images in class.
A judge has sanctioned Southwest Airlines, writing that the airline twisted his words and disregarded his order in the case of a flight attendant who claimed that she was fired for expressing her opposition to abortion.
U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr found Southwest in contempt for the way it explained the case to flight attendants last year after losing a jury verdict. In a blistering 29-page order, the judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech.
On Monday, the judge ordered Southwest to pay the flight attendant’s most recent legal costs, dictated a statement for Southwest to relay to employees, and ordered three Southwest lawyers to complete “religious-liberty training” from a conservative Christian legal-advocacy group.
For Southwest, the sanctions add insult to injury. They stem from a roughly $800,000 judgment against the airline and the flight attendant’s union. Although that was less than the jury’s $5.1 million award, Charlene Carter also got her job back.
Carter, a longtime union critic, said she was fired after she called the union president “despicable” for attending the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. At the event, women protested the inauguration of President Donald Trump and called for protecting abortion rights among many issues.
The airline and Local 556 of the Transport Workers Union said Carter had made offensive posts on Facebook and harassed the union president in private messages.
The jury in a Dallas court found that Southwest violated Carter’s right to religious speech.
After the trial last year, the judge — a Trump nominee who joined the bench in 2019 — ordered the airline to tell flight attendants that under federal law, it “may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.”
Instead, the airline told employees that it “does not discriminate” on religious beliefs, and doubled down by telling flight attendants to follow the airline policy that it cited in firing Carter.
In an order this week that alternated between sarcasm and outrage, Starr ruled that Southwest “didn’t come close to complying with the Court’s order.” He schooled the airline on the definitions of “may,” “does” and ”tolerate” — complete with footnotes citing the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
A federal judge has ruled that it would violate Idaho medical providers’ free speech rights to sanction them for referring patients to out-of-state abortion services, rejecting the state attorney general’s interpretation of Idaho’s abortion ban.
Idaho’s law makes it illegal to perform or attempt to perform an abortion, a crime punishable by two to five years in prison. It also makes it unlawful for health care professionals to assist in the provision or attempted provision of one, with the penalty being the suspension or loss of their medical license.
Republican Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador wrote a letter to a conservative lawmaker in March in which he opined that referring a patient to legal abortion services in other states would constitute assisting in an abortion or attempted abortion — and thus would require the suspension of the health professional’s license.
Planned Parenthood and several medical providers sued the next month, arguing such a restriction would violate their First Amendment right to free speech. Health care providers are not restricted from referring patients out of state for prenatal care or other treatment, they noted.
Medical professionals “will be forced to choose between facing criminal penalties themselves and offering referrals and information about legal out-of-state medicinal services to their patients,” U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill wrote in his order Monday. “Simply put, their speech will be chilled.”
The case is one of two targeting Idaho’s strict abortion laws. A separate lawsuit challenges a new Idaho measure making it illegal to help minors get an abortion without parental consent. Attorneys general from 20 states filed a brief Tuesday urging the court to block it.
“The Constitution protects the individual right to travel between states, and Idaho’s radical Legislature cannot abolish that right,” Democratic Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement.
A federal trial for the man who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue approached its conclusion Friday as the defense, trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, pressed its case that mental illness spurred the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.
Robert Bowers, a 50 year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, was convicted in June on 63 criminal counts for the 2018 massacre at Tree of Life synagogue. The jury has been hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial and will decide whether Bowers will receive the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors have presented evidence that Bowers was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people when he opened fire at the synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, killing members of three congregations gathered for Sabbath worship and study. The defense argues Bowers has schizophrenia and acted out of a delusional belief that Jews were participating in a genocide of white people.
On Friday, a defense psychiatrist who met with Bowers 10 times for nearly 40 hours said Bowers saw himself as a soldier of God in a war in which Satan was trying to use Jewish people to bring about the end of the world. Dr. George Corvin, of Raleigh, N.C., said it was a delusion brought on by psychosis.
Corvin said Bowers continues to express delusional beliefs about Jews — “disgustingly so” — and that he is incapable of remorse. He said Bowers should be on anti-psychotic medication.
Bowers “has a belief that we’re at the end of a war that’s been going on for thousands of years,” Corvin testified. “He still envisions what he did as an unfortunate act of violence at the direction of God — that it will save lives. He believes he’s a tool for God. I know it sounds absurd. It’s psychotic.”
Corvin continued: “This is the result of a mental illness.”
Corvin was one of several defense experts who diagnosed Bowers with schizophrenia, a serious brain disorder whose symptoms include delusions and hallucinations. A neurologist testifying for the prosecution disputed that Bowers has schizophrenia, saying Bowers has a personality disorder but is not delusional, and that mental illness did not appear to play a role in the attack. Prosecutors have noted Bowers spent six months planning the shooting.
Court Watch - POSTED: 2023/09/23 16:28
