Live Oak is a small community close to the north shore of California’s Monterey Bay, just a couple of miles east of downtown Santa Cruz, and roughly in the middle of California’s western coastline. Like most of the places in California, there is a large Hispanic population, but the area around Santa Cruz has the highest concentrations of Hispanics in California.
On May 5, 2010, the date of the annual Mexican holiday known as Cinco de Mayo, several male students came to Live Oak High School wearing tee-shirts bearing depictions of the American flag on them. The school administration sent them home after they refused his request to hide the flag by turning the shirts inside out, saying that they could either leave school voluntarily for the day, or be suspended. Figuring this was a no brainer, the boys left for the day.
On behalf of the boys, the Freedom Law Center sued, and the case made it’s way to the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. A three-judge panel of the court ruled against them, holding, in essence, that the right of the Hispanic students at Live Oak High School to be incensed over being shown the American flag trumped the boys’ First Amendment rights of free expression.
On behalf of the boys, attorney William Becker of the Freedom Law Center says he will first ask for an en banc review from the Ninth Circuit (a reconsideration by the full court rather than the three-judge panel), and if that fails, he will appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
As might be expected, there have been a number of articles written about this case. One, from American Thinker contributor William Sullivan, is HERE. Another, written by law professor Eugene Volokh, is HERE. The official Freedom Law Center account is HERE, and it includes a photo of the boys wearing their flag attire.
And by the way, Cinco de Mayo, which honors the victory by Mexican troops over the forces of Napoleon III at Puebla in 1862, is much more widely celebrated by Hispanics in the United States than by Mexicans in Mexico. That is one of the reasons why I think such celebrations here are often thinly veiled accolades to the idea of an Aztlan Reconquista more than anything else.