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ACLU Helps Expelled Student Sue School for Illegal Cell Phone Search

by Kendra Cunningham on September 3, 2009 at 04:15 PM


On the behalf of a North Mississippi middle school student, the ACLU and its Mississippi chapter have filed suit against Southaven Middle School, claiming that administrators wrongfully expelled the boy after illegally searching his cell phone.

According to Cellular-News, 12-year-old Richard Wade's cell phone was confiscated after he was caught reading a text message. But rather than giving him detention, the honor student's football coach searched through his personal information, including pictures he had taken of himself dancing in his bathroom. After interpreting those dance moves as gang signs (wrongfully, the plaintiff's lawyers say), the coach alerted the rest of the staff, as well as the authorities. The whole escapade resulted in suspension, a disciplinary hearing, and ultimately the expulsion of young Wade -- all founded on the coach's claim that the youngster was throwing gang signs in the illegally seized images.



Kristy Bennett, staff attorney with the ACLU of Mississippi, told Cellular-News, "The rights of students to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and to due process are not suspended when they walk through the schoolhouse door." Even further, Reginald T. Shuford, an attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, added, "School officials and the police officer involved never pointed to anything that would suggest that pictures of Richard dancing were linked to a gang in any way."

Richard's mother wound up moving to nearby Memphis so that her son could remain in school, but the boy was -- ironically enough -- bullied and intimidated by student gang members. Finding herself with no choice but to uproot her family from the region altogether, Richard's mother moved them to Savannah, Georgia, where Richard is enrolled for the current school year. The ACLU seeks to have all related charges dropped from Richard's record -- be they academic, legal, or otherwise. If the ACLU's claims are in fact true, and we were in Richard's place -- humiliated, demonized and exiled from our homes -- we'd think a clean record would be letting the school board off easy. [From: Cellular-News, via Textually]

Tags: cell phone, CellPhone, illegal search, IllegalSearch, lawsuits, privacy, school, texting, texting ban, TextingBan, top

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