Parents of a Tennessee high school student have sued the local school board and District Attorney, saying their son was expelled and punished unfairly under a “zero tolerance policy” the district has.
The suit was filed by Julie and Scott Wernert on August 16 in U.S. District Court in Nashville against District Attorney Stacey Edmonson and the Williamson County school board.
This marks the second case that is pending against the school district over a 2023 policy members of the school board passed following the 2023 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School.
The other case involves two students at the middle school.
In the latest suit, the Wernerts argue that Edmonson’s office criminally prosecuted their son, and he was “humiliated before his peers, deprived of access to his classes and curriculum and made to suffer other indignities.”
This resulted, they say, after their son was expelled from school for allegedly making a “Hitler salute” as well as making a comment about North Korea while in class last September 11.
The zero tolerance policy that Williamson County Schools has says that any student who is found to make a threat, including that of speech, that any “reasonable person” would conclude might lead to death or serious injury for at least two people will be expelled from school for one year.
According to the parents’ lawsuit, though, the district hasn’t presented any evidence that their son actually made the comment or the salute. The parents further claim that when Nikki Patton, the principal of Independence High School, was told they lacked proof, she responded:
“I don’t care. I want him arrested.”
As such, the boy was arrested, strip searched and taken to a juvenile detention center, where he was put into solitary confinement, according to the lawsuit.
Since state law doesn’t define the word “threat,” the suit said that “the lack of an intent element leaves a child who utters anything that can be even remotely construed as a ‘threat’ vulnerable to criminal prosecution and other dire consequences.”
The earlier lawsuit was filed back in May on behalf of two middle school students. It claims that they were both questioned and subsequently punished under the district’s policy.
The first incident involved a 14-year-old who attends Page Middle School. Another student accused them in August of 2024 of making a threat that he had a gun in his backpack, and that he’d shoot up the school and also had a bomb at his home.
According to that suit, the boy was placed on a solitary confinement hold for 24 hours and “was required to strip down and change into jail clothes while an adult male guard was facing away.”
The boy was incarcerated for four days and was then placed under house arrest in the custody of his parents.
The parents appealed the decision to the school board, and the boy was ultimately allowed to return to class.
There is apparently no resolution as of yet to the second incident, which involved a 13-year-old sending a text message that included a “Threat of Mass Violence” at Fairview Middle School.
