The attack on the right to protest led to a black high school student's expulsion after she didn't stand for the lil' pledge wypipo have become all gung ho about.
India Landry was sitting in her principal's office in Oct. 2017 when she refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance and was subsequently expelled, BuzzFeed News reports.
The 18-year-old, who was then 17, has sued Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District and has now received public opposition from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In a brief, Paxton requested permission to argue against Landry on the basis of the state’s law that parents must grant permission for students to rightfully sit during the pledge. As enacted by the Texas Education Code Section 25.082(b), and cited within the brief, “the board of trustees of each school district… shall require students, once during each school day at each campus, to recite… the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag.”
“Requiring the pledge to be recited at the start of every school day has the laudable result of fostering respect for our flag and a patriotic love of our country,” the Texas Tribune reported Paxton saying. “This case is about providing for the saying of the pledge of allegiance while respecting the parental right to direct the education of children.”
The case undeniably mirrors the recent controversies centered around football players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against black people.
When being expelled, the school secretary told Landry “This is not the NFL,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Similar to the grievances voiced by NFL players about the anthem, Landry finds trouble in pledging her allegiance to a flag that has become a symbol of more than the idealized America.
“I don’t think that the flag is what is says it’s for, for liberty and justice and all that,” Landry told KHOU. “It’s not obviously what’s going on in America today… I wouldn’t stand because it goes against everything I believe in.”
According to the Texas Tribune, the case is set for trial in 2019.
Now, check these out:
Colin Kaepernick’s Case Against The NFL Is Headed To Trial
Ohio High School Student Faces Expulsion After Reportedly Raising His Voice At A White Teacher
