News

NEBRASKA

NEW JERSEY

LOUISIANA

MONTANA — The Great Falls school board voted on March 11 to expel a high school senior who had posted pictures on his personal Web site under the heading "10 Hottest Freshman Girls."

Kenny Volk, who is currently attending nearby C.M.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

CALIFORNIA

PENNSYLVANIA

FLORIDA — A federal appellate court in March affirmed a district court's ruling that a student at Killian High School in suburban Miami did not have her constitutional rights violated when she was arrested and strip searched for distributing an underground pamphlet at the school.

The Miami-Dade County School District had Liliana Cuesta and eight other Killian students arrested in February 1998 for publishing threatening comments in their underground publication titled First Amendment. The 20-page anonymous pamphlet included a drawing of principal Timothy Dawson with a dart through his head and a column that mused about the consequences of shooting him.

Cuesta was strip searched in accordance with Dade County corrections intake policy.

ARKANSAS — Basing its decision on an earlier Arkansas case, the state supreme court in January ruled that a Fayetteville High School student's rap lyrics constituted a "true threat" of physical violence, upholding a juvenile court's criminal conviction of the student.

Fayetteville student Blake Jones was charged with terroristic threatening, a felony, after his former friend Allison Arnold said she felt threatened by violent rap lyrics he had written and given her.

Blake's lyrics – styled after those of rapper Eminem – presented a true threat to Arnold, the court decided, because they were specifically written about and delivered to her.

WASHINGTON