Posted in Personal Injury Lawyer
The parents of two students at Kettle Moraine High School have filed a lawsuit against the school for banning their teenagers from wearing pro-gun t-shirts.
The lawsuit says that the two students recently wore t-shirts, that had an image of a firearm in support of gun rights organizations, to school.
“I got it because I like the shirt,” Robert Newhouse, a sophomore at Kettle Moraine High School said. “They’re really fun. It’s great to use to go hunting.”
Robert said that guns have been part of his life for a long time and he enjoys learning about them from his father, who is a retired marine. He said that the principal told him that students can’t wear clothes that depict guns.
“I can understand if it was something that was very threatening or very violent,” Kimberly Newhouse, Robert’s mother said. “But just to be a picture and to be a supporter of our gun rights and be a supporter of just, legal ownership of guns, it was very upsetting.”
The students allege that the school dress code doesn’t have this policy and that their t-shirts displayed guns in a non-violent, non-threatening manner.
“It doesn’t matter what your dress code says,” Nik Clark, Chairman and CEO of Wisconsin Carry, Inc., a non-profit organization that supports gun rights said, “The constitution of the United States and the first amendment trumps your dress code.”
“If a school sanctions a walkout for gun control and to call for gun control, to call for universal background checks, to call for red flag laws, certainly they should at least allow students to wear a non-violent, non-threatening shirt as they go about their daily business,” Clark said. “If we allow schools, for the first 18 years of kids’ lives, to indoctrinate them with guns are evil, guns are bad, you can’t even have a picture of a gun in a non-violent, non-threatening way, we wouldn’t even have a right to carry movement. If we allow that kind of indoctrination to take place in the public schools.”
The lawsuit asks the court to stop the school from banning the t-shirts and any attorney fees associated with the case.
“I definitely feel like it isn’t fair because I see other people expressing their other beliefs I may disagree with,” Newhouse said. “But I’m not going after them because of that. I feel like I’m getting targeted because of my political beliefs.”