Six Barrington High School students have filed a defamation lawsuit in federal court saying they were unconstitutionally disciplined after other students saw a group photograph taken at a private “white-out”-themed party and mistook one of the girls’ tagged initials, K.K.K., “as alignment with the Ku Klux Klan,” the Daily Herald reports.
Other students then “made it their summer project to instigate a virtual internet mob to threaten and pressure District 220 to involve itself and mete out punishment for the thought crime they imagined had occurred,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the students earlier this year, names District 220, Supt. Brian Harris and Barrington High School Principal Steve McWilliams as defendants. They filed a motion to dismiss the case two days later, saying the girls were never deprived of any constitutional rights. The case is up for a status hearing Monday. The school district has argued the case should be dismissed because the students weren’t truly disciplined.
