{"id":4790,"date":"2011-05-09T02:17:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T09:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4790"},"modified":"2011-05-09T02:26:46","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T09:26:46","slug":"scotus-injustice-through-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/09\/scotus-injustice-through-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS: Injustice Through Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS gets lots of heat for the several rulings of late, like Citizens United<\/em>, that shred the Constitution to remake America into a Republican Fascist Corporate Plutocracy.\u00a0 Often however, great injustice falls by the wayside unnoticed, due to their silence, expressed by refusing to hear a case when when a lower court has behaved shamefully.\u00a0 Such is the case of a girl, known as HS, whose First Amendment right to freedom of expression was denied by the Fifth Circuit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"9scotus\"Earlier this week, the Supreme Court declined<\/a> to review the case of a recent Texas high school student who was kicked off her school\u2019s cheerleading squad after she refused to chant the name of a basketball player who had allegedly raped her<\/strong>. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative courts in the country, ruled<\/a> last November that the victim \u2014 who is known only as H.S. \u2014 had no right to refuse to applaud her attacker because as a cheerleader in uniform, she was an agent of the school<\/strong>. To add insult to injury, the Fifth Circuit dismissed her case as \u201cfrivolous\u201d and sanctioned the girl, forcing her family to pay the school district\u2019s <\/strong>$45,000 legal fees<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to court documents, H.S. was 16 when she was raped at a house party by one of her school\u2019s star athletes, Rakheem Bolton. Bolton was arrested, but by pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault, he received a reduced sentence of probation and community service<\/strong>. Bolton was allowed to return to school and resume his place on the basketball team. Four months later, H.S. was cheering with her squad at a game when Bolton lined up to take a free throw. The squad wanted to do a cheer that included his name, but H.S. refused, choosing instead to stand silently with her arms folded<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to have to say his name and I didn\u2019t want to cheer for him,\u201d she later told<\/a> reporters. \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to encourage anything he was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several school officials<\/a> of the \u201csports obsessed<\/a>\u201d small town took issue with H.S.\u2019s silence, and ordered her to cheer for Bolton. When H.S. refused again, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad. Her family decided to sue school officials and the district. Their lawyer argued<\/a> that H.S.\u2019s right to exercise free expression had been violated and that students shouldn\u2019t be punished for not complying with \u201cinsensitive and unreasonable directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading legal scholars have pointed out<\/a> that this case is about more than justice for one purported rape victim \u2014 it\u2019s a civil rights issue that goes to the heart of students\u2019 right of free speech under the First Amendment<\/strong>. Though it might seem obvious to most people that H.S. had every right to sit out that cheer, the lower court insisted that as a cheerleader, she was speaking for the school and as such had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to applaud her alleged rapist\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

No wonder Clarence Thomas is laughing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The temptation here is to focus on the criminal, but that is not the issue at all.\u00a0 He committed a crime, and was sentenced, as a court deemed appropriate.\u00a0 I will not second guess that court, because there are too many particulars about the incident that I do not know.<\/span><\/p>\n

The real issue is here is that her reluctance to cheer for this individual was reasonable.\u00a0 Had it been based on racism, homophobia, or some other form or recognized criminal hatred, that Republicans so love, the Fifth Circuit would have been correct, but that was not the case.\u00a0 She had just cause for refusing to participate in an activity that was traumatic for her.<\/span><\/p>\n

SCOTUS could have heard the case, should have heard the case, and seen that justice prevailed, but instead they demonstrated that individual rights matter nothing to them, except to protect the misbegotten right of individual corporate criminals to offend.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS gets lots of heat for the several rulings of late, like Citizens United, that shred the Constitution to remake America into a Republican Fascist Corporate Plutocracy.\u00a0 Often however, great injustice falls by the wayside unnoticed, due to their silence, expressed by refusing to hear a case when when a lower court has behaved shamefully.\u00a0 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}