Recent news stories describe an incident in West Virginia where Jared Marcum, a 14 year old student, was ordered by a teacher to remove (or turn inside out) an NRA T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it. The student refused and ended up being arrested for (among other things) "disrupting the educational process." The dress code rules for the school do not prohibit pictures of weapons, the student is back in school wearing the shirt, lots of other students apparently are wearing them too as a token of support. Which raises an obvious question.
If, as the school now seems to concede, the shirt did not violate any school rules, the teacher's order was a violation of the student's rights under the First Amendment as currently interpreted by the courts. It follows that any disruption resulting from the incident—apparently other students cheered Marcum when he was led out of the cafeteria—was the fault of the teacher who gave an order he was not entitled to give. Yet, for some reason, there has been no talk of arresting the teacher for committing the offense that was the basis for arresting the student.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
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