Two 14-year-old boys were kicked out of their Catholic high school in 2020, because a three-year-old photo of them in green acne masks was interpreted as "blackface." The day before, they'd posted a photo in a white acne mask.
A jury has ordered St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California to pay $1 million -- $500,000 each -- to the two former students and reimburse $70,000 in tuition. (My husband's three children are St. Francis grads.) The jury found the school had failed to do a proper investigation.
Parents of one of the boys claim the principal told them their removal was due to "optics" in the wake of George Floyd's death a week earlier rather than "intent."
According to the lawsuit, the high school supported a protest calling for the boys' expulsion on grounds they dressed up in blackface as a joke.
This is a private school, and it is entirely appropriate to consider out-of-school behavior, especially if egregious. But there is no excuse for the appalling rush to judgment.
Sounds like this won't be enough to put the school out of business. But perhaps they'll have to delay the new whatever.
I suspect the school learned (or perhaps NOT) a valuable lesson about doing a proper investigation before actually accusing people of anything (there are always three sides to
any story, what one side claims, what the other side claims, and what ACTUALLY happened).
Judgements will continue to go against schools as long as they focus on out-of-school behaviors and not what happens at school during school hours.