An elementary student lost recess privileges for two weeks and was made to apologize on the playground to her classmates and teachers after altering a Black Lives Matter drawing to say “Any Life.”
The principal of Viejo Elementary in Orange County, California, considered the drawing “racist” and “inappropriate,” according to court documents, and handed down a recess ban to the student. She was also prevented from drawing further pictures for friends.
When Chelsea Boyle, the mother of the first grader, found out what happened over a year later from other parents, she was enraged. She believes the punishment was too severe and violated her daughter’s First Amendment rights, so she phoned attorneys and began planning a full-blown lawsuit.
“I was immediately angry, I didn’t know what had happened, I knew it was wrong fundamentally,” the mom told Fox News. “My daughter’s rights were taken away, and I just started reaching out to find out what compelled speech was. I didn’t know what it was until I spoke to attorneys.”
The family of the little girl — identified only as B.B. because of her age — filed a First Amendment suit against the Capistrano Unified School District in 2023. The federal district court ultimately sided with the school and upheld the principal’s decision. Noting that the student was too young to be protected by the First Amendment.
Now, Boyle is taking the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for a reversal to “restore the free speech rights of all students, including first-graders,” according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the family for free. Their tagline is “Suing the government since 1973,” and indeed it’s the oldest Libertarian and pro-business public interest law firm in the country.
The saga started in March 2021 when B.B.’s teacher read an age-appropriate book about Martin Luther King Jr. to the classroom. “The book had the effect of making B.B. feel bad for a classmate of color (M.C.); B.B. then drew a picture for M.C. to help her feel included,” stated the appeal.
The first grader wrote “Black Lives Mater” and added the words “any life” below it with four circles of different colors to “represent” her classmates. She gave it to her Black friend, M.C., who thanked her and took it home.
Boyle rationalized her daughter’s behavior while on “Just Listen to Yourself” podcast. “My children see color as a color, as a description. I am trying to raise them the way the world should be, not the way it is. That’s how I’m trying to make my personal change,” Boyle stated. Adding that her daughter’s best friend isn’t Black but is a person of color “and she didn’t understand why she didn’t matter, why her friend didn’t matter.”
According to the appeal, M.C.’s mom became concerned that her daughter was being singled out for her race and turned to the principal for guidance. According to the appeal, M.C.’s mom felt B.B.’s motives were “innocent” and didn’t call for punishment.
However, the principal felt that writing “any life” was “inconsistent with values taught in the school but acknowledged that [author’s] motives were ‘innocent’” and issued the punishment.
The two students are reportedly still friends.
“A parent might second-guess (the principal’s) conclusion, but his decision to discipline B.B. belongs to him, not the federal courts,” wrote U.S. Central District Court Judge David Carter in his ruling.
Judge Carter stated, “Students have the right to be free from speech that denigrates their race while at school,” but clarified that the First Amendment did not protect the drawing because of the age of the girl in the suit,” per the San Francisco Chronicle.
He continued, “Elementary school … is not a marketplace of ideas… Thus, the downsides of regulating speech there is not as significant as it is in high schools, where students are approaching voting age and controversial speech could spark conducive conversation.’
Even Judge Carter pointed out that both B.B. and M.C. have moved on from the incident.
Meanwhile, the family’s attorney, Caleb Trotter, is buckling up for a long fight. “An elementary school is not a totalitarian environment where students have no rights. The district court was wrong to conclude otherwise, bucking longstanding Supreme Court precedent and totally stripping a child of her First Amendment rights,” he stated in a July 15 press release.
He previously told the San Francisco Chronicle that if the Ninth Circuit Court sides with the school district, he might take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
