A federal judge has opted not to lift the suspension of a high school student in Washington state punished in connection with a most unflattering YouTube video about one of his teachers. The student, Gregory Requa, 18, denies involvement in producing the video, yet he has been suspended from Kentridge High School for 40 days, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
Requa’s lawyer argues that her client’s free speech rights are being violated—regardless of whether he participated in making and posting the video. But U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed with the school district’s argument that the punishment fit for the generally disrepectful behavior depicted in the video, which was shot with a hidden camera during an English class. “The court has no difficulty in concluding that one student filming another student standing behind a teacher making ‘rabbit ears’ and pelvic thrusts in her direction, or a student filming the buttocks of a teacher as she bends over in the classroom, constitutes a material and substantial disruption to the work and discipline of the school,” Pechman said.
The Post-Intelligencer has the story and the YouTube video.