Tennessee student is suing after being suspended for posting memes on Instagram mocking his principal

A Tennessee high school student is suing his school district for violating his First Amendment rights after he was suspended for posting three memes on Instagram that mocked the school principal.

The memes depicted the director in various humorous scenarios.

One featured director Jason Quick holding a box of vegetables that read “my broth” and “on god.”

Another showed Quick in a dress with cat ears and whiskers, while the third showed Quick’s head on top of a cartoon character being hugged, from the online game ‘Among Us’.

The student posted these memes to his personal Instagram account as a light-hearted way of poking fun at the principal, who was seen as overly serious, in an effort to add some lightheartedness to the principal’s character.

“It was to lightly mock a director who was considered a bit overly serious and to lighten the personality a bit,” said attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. TThe identity of the student remains confidential.

School administrators suspended the student for three days for claiming school policy violations.

The school handbook expressly prohibits students from sharing photos or videos that embarrass, humiliate, or disparage staff or students.

The district also introduced a social media policy in the 2022-2023 handbook prohibiting students from sharing posts deemed “inappropriate for a feral cat” (the name of the school’s football team), but the final 2023-2024 handbook contains no such provision.

Attorney Fitzpatrick argues that the student’s suspension was overly subjective because the student posted the memes outside of school hours, outside school buildings, and did not cause any disturbance in the school.

“That’s the problem here, which is that the school is trying to decide what students can and can’t say about them, even if the speech doesn’t affect the school day,” Fitzgerald said.

“Students have fooled their principal and teachers in their own time as long as there have been schools and the simple fact that some of it is now on social media doesn’t change the underlying principles of the First Amendment, which is that if what you say and do doesn’t affect school, it’s not the school’s business,” Fitzgerald told Fox 17.

Fitzpatrick claims that students have been teasing their principals and teachers outside of school for some time now, and the fact that some of it is now on social media shouldn’t change the underlying principles of the First Amendment.

He argues that if the speech or action does not affect the school environment, it should not be the school’s concern.

The lawyer even went so far as to cite a recent Supreme Court ruling that stated that schools cannot penalize students for making such expressions that occur outside of school, especially if they do not affect the school environment.

The student now wants his suspension removed from his school file, along with a review of the school’s photo and video policy.”

Court papers suggest that the principal depicted in the memes left the school at the end of the school year.