SLRC in the News
16 July 2002

Lawrence Schools Face Flag Lawsuit

By CLYDE L. STANCIL
DAILY Staff Writer
cstancil@decaturdaily.com

MOULTON, AL -- A Southern Legal Resource Center attorney said he has filed a federal lawsuit against the Lawrence County superintendent and one of his principals for banning the Confederate Flag.

Kirk Lyons, trial counsel for the center, distributed a press release Monday that said he is filing the suit on behalf of seven Cherokee-Confederate students.

He said the suit names Superintendent Dexter Rutherford and Principal Ricky Nichols.

16 suspended

Principal Ricky Nichols suspended about 16 students in October for displaying the flag after he announced that he would enforce the ban. Lyons said he is representing seven of the suspended students.

Lyons said that he and Charles E. Yow, an attorney for the Native American Initiative, filed the suit in U.S District Court in Huntsville.

Neither Nichols nor Rutherford could be reached for comment.

School board attorney H. Jerome Thompson said he could not comment on the matter until he sees the lawsuit.

Lyons said that the ban is an ongoing constitutional and civil rights violation. He said it is discriminatory toward the Cherokee-Confederate Southern Americans who "find the school's bias against Confederate heritage deeply offensive.

"Cherokees played an extensive roles as Confederate-Southern Americans during the Civil War, and students at Lawrence County High School ... hold Confederate symbols in veneration," he said.

After Nichols suspended the students, Lyons and members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans appealed the flag ban to the board of education. They asked the board to implement a curriculum designed to make students more tolerant of Confederate heritage.

The board declined the request and stood by Nichols' decision to uphold the ban.

Speake School also has a ban on displaying the Confederate flag, and its principal suspended three brothers who wore the flag on their T-shirts.

Hatton schools also placed a ban on displaying the flag.

© July 16, 2002, The Decatur Daily News