“We’ve been through a lot of fights throughout history to get these laws on the books"
The Brentwood Union School District is being sued after J. Douglas Adams Middle School ignored complaints of racial discrimination.
East Bay Times reports that a sixth grade student at the J. Douglas Adams Middle School filed a lawsuit against the district after the school failed to listen to complaints of racial discrimination.
Located in Brentwood, California, the school allegedly failed to prevent a hostile education environment.
Attorney Mark Griffin, who represents student, ZD, said, “it preceded the (Donald) Trump inauguration, when a lot of people felt empowered and a lot of children felt alright to speak in certain ways. My client was an interdistrict transfer that year and felt harassed by a student who was Caucasian.”
ZD, who is African-American and Puerto Rican reportedly had racial slurs thrown at him including “the I in Asian stands for idiot” and “people with blond hair rule.” Chocolate milk was also poured onto ZD and ZD was suspended after biting a student who was destroying his laptop.
Griffin revealed that the student’s biggest concern was not the bully but the inaction of the staff, who failed to acknowledge the incidents properly.
“My client took the initiative, called the school district during his suspension to report this, he was hung up on and our records show that they tried to punish him for insubordination,” Grffin said. “… after that school year, they went to revoke my student’s interdistrict transfer.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that schools must investigate incidents once they know of student-on-student harassment to prevent it from happening in the future.
“We’ve been through a lot of fights throughout history to get these laws on the books,” Griffin said.