Tullahoma (Tenn.) High School principal Jason Quick is seen in three Instagram posts from student I.P., who was suspended for three days for making the posts (images via Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression).
A high school student says a “thin-skinned” principal violated his First Amendment free speech rights when he was suspended for three days over social media posts he made mocking the head of the school.
The student, a rising senior at Tullahoma High School in Tennessee, was suspended for three days in August 2022 after posting three doctored images of principal Jason Quick. The suspension was issued by assistant principal Derrick Crutchfield, according to a lawsuit filed by the student.
Backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), an advocacy organization that focuses on potential free speech violations on school campuses, the student — identified in pleadings only as “I.P.” — argued that the suspension was more about the school administrator’s ego than school safety.
“This case is about a thin-skinned high school principal defying the First Amendment and suspending the student for lampooning the principal on the student’s Instagram page even though the posts caused no disruption at school,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit describes each of the posts.
“One showed Quick holding a box of vegetables, another (which I.P. merely reposted) showed Quick in a dress with cat ears and whiskers, and the third showed Quick’s face on a video game character being hugged by a cartoon bird,” the lawsuit says. “I.P. intended the images to satirize, in I.P.’s view, Quick’s overly serious demeanor.”
The complaint notes that I.P. “posted each image from his own device, off campus, and on his own time.” The second image was reposted by I.P. during a family trip to Italy in June 2022, the lawsuit says.
The posts, according to the complaint, were meant to be a “satirical commentary on Quick’s desire to be seen by students as a serious and professional academic administrator.”
Nevertheless, Quick and Crutchfield suspended I.P. for five days in August 2022, finding that the student had violated the school’s social media policy.
According to the complaint, the student’s suspension was based on two policies. One Tullahoma High School policy prohibits students, whether at home or school, from posting pictures that “result[] in the embarrassment, demeaning, or discrediting of any student or staff,” regardless of whether the pictures “substantially disrupt the school day.” The other policy prohibits students from engaging in social media activity “unbecoming of a Wildcat,” the school’s mascot.
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FIRE says that both policies are unconstitutional.
“[T]he School District provides administrators, teachers, and staff no guidance regarding what material ’embarrass[es], demean[s], or discredit[s] the reputation’ of another,” the complaint says of the school’s policy regarding social media posts. Nor does the school provide guidance “regarding what constitutes a social media post ‘unbecoming of a Wildcat,”” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit says that the school couldn’t prove that I.P.’s posts caused any disruption or interfered with school activities in any way.
“The First Amendment bars public school employees from acting as a round-the-clock board of censors over student protection,” the lawsuit says. “Unless a student’s off-campus expression causes substantial disruption at school, the job of policing their speech falls to parents, not the government.”
The lawsuit notes that Quick left Tullahoma High School in June.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring the school from enforcing its social media policy and the “Wildcat Policy” and an expungement of I.P.’s suspension. The student is also seeking a declaratory judgment that both the school district’s policies and the August 2022 suspension violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as an undetermined amount of compensatory and punitive damages.
The Tullahoma City School district didn’t immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment about the lawsuit.
You can read the complaint, via FIRE, below.
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