Texas Student Who Protested Pledge of Allegiance Gets $90,000 in Settlement

In Texas, state regulation requires college students to pledge allegiance day by day to the flags of the USA and of the Lone Star State. As a highschool scholar in Spring, Texas, Mari Oliver sat silently throughout this day by day recitation.

In September 2017, two months into Ms. Oliver’s senior 12 months at Klein Oak Excessive College, Benjie Arnold, a sociology trainer, performed Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the usA.”, and requested the category to put in writing concerning the emotions the track summoned up in them. He then instructed the scholars, together with Ms. Oliver, to transcribe the phrases of the Pledge of Allegiance, in keeping with a federal lawsuit she filed that 12 months towards him, three different academics, a faculty administrator and the college district, alleging that she was harassed as a result of she selected to not recite the pledge.

On that day in September, she didn’t write down any phrases. As an alternative, she drew a squiggly line.

4 years later, legal professionals for Ms. Oliver, now 21 and lengthy since graduated from Klein Oak Excessive College, introduced on Tuesday a settlement with Mr. Arnold reached earlier this month beneath which Ms. Oliver will obtain $90,000 paid by the Texas Affiliation of College Boards.

“Nonreligious college students usually face bullying or harassment for expressing their deeply held convictions,” Nick Fish, the president of the civil rights group American Atheists, which pursued Ms. Oliver’s case, stated in a press release. “Nobody ought to should endure the years of harassment, disrespect, and bullying our consumer confronted. The truth that this occurred in a public faculty and by the hands of employees who ought to know higher is especially appalling.”

Ms. Oliver objected to the pledge as a result of she didn’t consider that the USA ensures “liberty and justice for all,” particularly for folks of coloration, in keeping with the assertion. She additionally didn’t agree with the phrases “Underneath God.” The U.S. Supreme Court docket dominated in 1943 that college students have a First Modification proper to choose out of saluting the flag or pledging allegiance.

Theresa Gage-Dieringer, a spokeswoman for the Texas Affiliation of College Boards, which offers legal responsibility protection for the Klein Impartial College District, stated that “after dialogue with counsel and Mr. Arnold, it was determined that within the curiosity of limiting continued costly litigation, a settlement settlement ought to be reached.”

Mr. Arnold didn’t admit wrongdoing, in keeping with Geoffrey T. Blackwell, litigation counsel at American Atheists.

Mr. Arnold has taught at Klein Oak for greater than 5 many years, and is at present nonetheless employed on the faculty, stated Justin Elbert, a spokesman for the Klein Impartial College District. Mr. Arnold and his lawyer didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon Wednesday.

After the pledge task, Mr. Arnold informed the category that college students who failed to finish it will obtain a zero grade, after which stated individuals who sat through the pledge have been similar to “Soviet communists, members of the Islamic religion in search of to impose Shariah regulation, and people who condone pedophilia,” in keeping with the lawsuit.

In an unsuccessful transfer to be shielded from the lawsuit, Mr. Arnold contended that the pledge task had a “official tutorial function” and wasn’t meant to instill patriotism, in keeping with court docket paperwork. He additionally stated that he had not harassed Ms. Oliver or handled her in another way from her friends due to her refusal.

By the point of the settlement, Mr. Arnold was the one defendant remaining. Two years earlier, a federal decide dismissed Ms. Oliver’s claims towards the opposite faculty employees members and the college district.

Starting in 2014, as a freshman in highschool, there have been myriad penalties for Ms. Oliver’s opting out of the pledge. Lecturers singled her out through the pledge, despatched her to the principal’s workplace, admonished her after class, and confiscated her cellphone, in keeping with the lawsuit. Regardless of Ms. Oliver and her mom voicing issues to highschool officers, the pushback from academics continued and intensified, they stated.

Mr. Blackwell stated that Ms. Oliver’s expertise “was in no way distinctive.”

“College students across the nation face related incidents of discrimination daily,” he stated, including that the group’s survey of 34,000 nonreligious People discovered that greater than one-third of people from 18 to 25 reported experiencing discrimination in schooling due to their nonreligious beliefs.

Regardless of the Supreme Court docket’s 1943 ruling defending the proper to not recite the pledge or salute the flag, debate and litigation over this proper have endured.

Three years in the past, a sixth-grade scholar from Lakeland, Fla., who had refused to recite the pledge was arrested after a dispute with a substitute trainer about his protest. The boy, 11, informed the trainer that he believed the pledge represented racism. In 2017, India Landry, then a 17-year-old highschool scholar in Texas, was expelled after sitting by means of the pledge.

In a press release despatched by Mr. Blackwell, Ms. Oliver stated that she was hopeful that her case would “encourage others to face up for his or her rights, particularly Black folks,” however that she was “saddened that Black folks in America nonetheless should battle for equality and fairness.”