CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two years have passed since a student at Logan Middle School was arrested and suspended from school following an incident that started with a teacher’s objection to the National Rifle Association t-shirt he’d worn to school.
The April 2013 controversy drew national attention and debate focused on First Amendment rights while in school environments.
Though criminal charges of obstruction of an officer and disruption of the educational process were later dismissed, the one-day suspension for Jared Marcum, now a sophomore at Logan County High School, remains on his permanent school record.
The boy’s parents have unsuccessfully tried to have it expunged while also seeking discipline or additional training on school dress code policy for the teacher involved.
“We’ve waited almost two years for them to do this and they chose not to do it, for whatever reason, I don’t know. To me, it would have been pretty simple,” said Ben White, the attorney for Marcum’s family, on Friday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Since there was no action, according to White, he filed a lawsuit on the family’s behalf last month in Charleston U.S. District Court seeking $200,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages on the grounds that Marcum’s constitutional rights were violated.
White said the teacher who first objected to Marcum’s green NRA shirt, which included a picture of a gun, was in the wrong, not the student. Marcum, an NRA member, had argued there was no policy in the school dress code that prohibited wearing an image of a gun on clothing.
“But for the teacher not understanding the policy and placing his hands on a student and forcibly grabbing him and leading him to the office and demanding that he take the shirt off, turn it inside out, call Mom for a new one, we wouldn’t have this,” White said.
“Looking at the video, I can’t see any disruptive behavior from the student, the video we were able to recover and obtain,” he said. The obstruction and disruption charges against Marcum were dismissed in June 2013. “All the child was trying to do was tell his side of the story.”
The Logan County Board of Education is named in the lawsuit along with other school officials in Logan County.