Two families in Tennessee’s Williamson County school district have filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Bill Lee and the Williamson County Board of Education after two students in the district were arrested and suspended for “threats of mass violence.”
The lawsuit is challenging the way in which Williamson County education officials enforced the 2023 “zero tolerance” law requiring districts to expel students for one year over comments that could be considered credible threats of mass violence. It alleges that the two middle school students were detained, strip-searched, put in solitary confinement, sent to alternative school, and visited by social workers and probation officers after district officials misconstrued conversations and jokes between students as serious threats.
Larry Crain, an attorney representing the families, told Tennessee Firefly that he believes the punishment of the two students was an overreaction on the part of school officials and a misapplication of the law. He said it’s his hope that the lawsuit will lead to more “common sense” applications of the law and change how issues like these are handled by school districts.
“The case has generated a lot of attention both locally and nationally because there’s an increased emphasis today on part of many school systems to take drastic measures. I think what [started] a lot of this was the Covenant School shooting [in Nashville] in March of last year, but the problem is the statute criminalizes trivial speech that is common to adolescents,” he said. “These are kids that are honor roll students that have no prior disciplinary records, and this is happening all over the state of Tennessee because we’ve been inundated with calls from families and counties all over the state.”
According to court documents cited by Tennessee Lookout, the case centers on two incidents involving a 13-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy in the district. The boy was accused of saying he would bring guns to school and had a bomb at his home, despite the student’s claims that he only told friends about a lunchtime conversation with another student telling him about the firearms his grandfather owned. In the case of the 13-year-old, school administrators cited a message she sent in an email group chat that said, “On Thursday, we will kill all the Mexicos” as reason for her punishment. A full transcript of that chat showed other girls on the chat teasing the student for “looking Mexican” before asking her what she was doing Thursday. The lawsuit says her response to the question was in jest.
Crain said he believes there are many more such cases in the state in which students are facing unfair punishment for similar behavior. His opinion is in line with youth advocates who believe that punitive zero tolerance measures will lead to unnecessary expulsions and criminal charges against K-12 students.
“It’s almost as though there’s strict liability for anything involving any statement that involves certain buzzwords. I’m empathetic with the fact that security has become a huge issue clearly, and there are shootings almost every day somewhere in the country, but you don’t come at a gnat with a mallet when there are other sound ways of [addressing] it,” Crain said, noting that the case is still in early stages of litigation.
Gov. Bill Lee and Williamson County Schools officials could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
