More Kentucky school systems are allowing students to wear Confederate flags in the wake of last year's settlement of a First Amendment lawsuit.

Jessamine and Boyle County are the latest school districts to allow students to wear the Confederate battle flag, said Donald Shelton of Nicholasville, spokesman for the Kentucky Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

"We haven't changed our dress-code policies.  What we're doing is looking at our practices and procedures," Jessamine Superintendent Linda France said.

"For example, if a student wears a Confederate symbol, we will not automatically send that student home," France said.  "But we will look at each case student by student, to determine whether or not that Confederate symbol causes a disruption in the learning environment."

Boyd, Calloway, Fulton and Madison County school systems are among the other districts that changed their practices to allow the flag to be depicted on clothing, Shelton said.

"We're finding that most of them are cooperative and don't want the expense of court cases," he said.

The new interpretation stems from a settlement in U.S. District Court in Lexington involving a Madison County student named Timothy Castorina.

Castorina and his friend, Tiffany Dargavell, wore "Southern Thunder" T-shirts to school on Sept. 17, 1997, to commemorate what would have been Hank Williams Sr.'s 74th birthday.  The school's principal at the time, William Fultz, ordered the pair to turn the shirts inside out or change.  The flag image, Fultz said, violated the school dress code that prohibited anything with an "illegal, immoral or racist implication."

Castorina, then a junior, and Dargavell, a freshman, refused to cooperate.  The students were suspended for three days and returned to school in the same shirts, prompting a second suspension from which they never returned.  Instead, they were home-schooled.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wilhoit Jr. ruled that T-shirts were not a form of speech and threw out the case. But the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found he had erred and ordered a trial held.

The case was settled in September as the trial was about to begin, with the school agreeing to revise its dress code.  It also established criteria for determining whether dress is offensive and to set up an appeals process.

Castorina was the only remaining plaintiff in the First Amendment lawsuit when it was settled, because Dargavell dropped out of the case.

France and Boyle County Superintendent Pam Rogers said their districts didn't have an outright ban on the Confederate flag in the dress code of conduct established by their school boards.

"We had been interpreting the Confederate flag as an emblem that could be offensive or disruptive," Rogers said.

Since the Castorina case, "the courts are forcing us into a reactive mode," Rogers said.  "In other words, we cannot interpret whether things are offensive or disruptive" until there is a documented disruption.

"As we consulted with attorneys, we decided we needed to immediately change our implementation," Rogers said.  "We will, this summer, review the wording of our policy to see if we can be more specific."

The nickname for the Boyle district's sports teams is the Rebels, but Rogers said she doesn't have any data that students wear clothing with the Confederate flag any more than students in other school districts.

"The flag is not officially a symbol of the Boyle County school system," Rogers said.

Each school district sets standards of appropriate dress, and individual school councils set specifics if the district doesn't, said Brad Hughes, spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association. And districts can still ban a Confederate flag or other symbol if a disruption is documented.

"We advise them: Don't ban something just for the sake of banning it," Hughes said.  "If you can demonstrate and document -- whether it's a Confederate flag or white power or black power or whatever -- that it would be disruptive, then you can take action.  But you can't just simply say 'Well, we fear that this will be disruptive and so we're not going to allow that.'"

Wearing a Confederate flag is not an excuse for students to act irresponsibly, Shelton said.

"If you misuse that symbol by disrupting school, antagonizing other students, or by juxtaposing it with obscene or disrespectful language or symbols, the school has every right to discipline you, and we will support them in doing so," he said.

Reach Greg Kocher in the Nicholasville bureau at (859) 885-5775 or gkocher1@herald-leader.com.

© May 29, 2003, The Harold Leader