A California high school is allowed to bar students from wearing T-shirts with the American flag on them during a Cinco de Mayo event after a 2010 incident involving white and Mexican students, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.
The court found that administrators had reason to believe displaying the American flag would lead to violent confrontation, so it was justified in removing the students displaying it. Because only students wearing the American flag were threatened, students could still wear other national flags, such as Mexico’s, the court found.
The case notes two separate instances giving the school the authority to ban the image of the flag: In 2009, Mexican students threatened violence when other students started chanting “USA” around an American flag one year. “They are being racist. F*** them white boys. Let’s f*** them up,” one Mexican student told an assistant principal. The following year, in response to an American-flag T-shirt, some students threatened that “some gang members would come down from San Jose to ‘take care of’ the students’” wearing the shirt.