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Cheerleader must compensate school that told her to clap 'rapist'
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
The cheerleader refused to chant the name of Rakheem Bolton
A teenage girl who was dropped from her high
school's cheerleading squad after refusing to chant the name of a
basketball player who had sexually assaulted her must pay compensation
of $45,000 (£27,300) after losing a legal challenge against the
decision.
The United States Supreme Court on Monday
declined to hear a review of the case brought by the woman, who is
known only as HS. Lower courts had ruled that she was speaking for the
school, rather than for herself, when serving on a cheerleading squad –
meaning that she had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to
applaud.
She was 16 when she said she had been
raped at a house party attended by dozens of fellow students from
Silsbee High School, in south-east Texas. One of her alleged assailants,
a student athlete called Rakheem Bolton, was arrested, with two other
young men.
In court, Bolton pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour
assault of HS. He received two years of probation, community service, a
fine and was required to take anger-management classes. The charge of
rape was dropped, leaving him free to return to school and take up his
place on the basketball team.
Four months later,
in January 2009, HS travelled to one of Silsbee High School's
basketball games in Huntsville. She joined in with the business of
leading cheers throughout the match. But when Bolton was about to take a
free throw, the girl decided to stand silently with her arms folded.
"I
didn't want to have to say his name and I didn't want to cheer for
him," she later told reporters. "I just didn't want to encourage
anything he was doing."
Richard Bain, the
school superintendent in the sport-obsessed small town, saw things
differently. He told HS to leave the gymnasium. Outside, he told her she
was required to cheer for Bolton. When the girl said she was unwilling
to endorse a man who had sexually assaulted her, she was expelled from
the cheerleading squad.
The subsequent legal
challenge against Mr Bain's decision perhaps highlights the seriousness
with which Texans take cheerleading and high school sports, which can
attract crowds in the tens of thousands.
HS and
her parents instructed lawyers to pursue a compensation claim against
the principal and the School District in early 2009. Their lawsuit
argued that HS's right to exercise free expression had been violated
when she was instructed to applaud her attacker. But two separate
courts ruled against her, deciding that a cheerleader freely agrees to
act as a "mouthpiece" for a institution and therefore surrenders her
constitutional right to free speech. In September last year, a federal
appeals court upheld those decisions and announced that HS must also
reimburse the school sistrict $45,000, for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit
against it.
"As a cheerleader, HS served as a
mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech –
namely, support for its athletic teams," the appeals court decision
says. "This act constituted substantial interference with the work of
the school because, as a cheerleader, HS was at the basketball game for
the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily."
The
family's lawyer said the ruling meanst that students exercising their
right of free speech can end up punished for refusing to follow
"insensitive and unreasonable directions".
COMMENT
If you haven't figured out the entire government from the school board to the supreme court is the enemy, this ought to give you a fucking clue.
They need removed from office. All of them. There is NO middle ground with them.
The enemy does these things, like compel this young lady to compensate her rapist for not cheering him to 1.) Show us they dominate us totally, 2.)they're fucking perverts, and 3.) to show resistance is futile.
It's not.
Remove them from power. Either through the ballot box via emergency recall election-this most certainly qualifies-or break out the cartridge box.
Most certainly kill the rapist.
Or allow yourselves to be degraded and stolen from. Hell, maybe they'll let you watch American Idol for your obedience.
2 comments:
The cartridge box, for ALL of the perps.
Bob
III
I wouldn't mind seeing them thrown in a Thunderdome...
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