Lacey Mom Fights Back Against Lacey School District’s “Viewpoint Discrimination” and Punishment Against Students Suspended for Going to Gun Range
LACEY-Amanda Buron, a mother of children in the Lacey Township School District has filed a “Notice of Intention to Recall” longtime school board member Linda Downing. Buron said Downing, one of the school board members who presided over the drafting of a student handbook that allowed the district to suspend two students for going to a gun range with their family.
The story has made national headlines and has become a focal point of government overreach when it comes to the Second Amendment.
Buron claims it’s not just the board’s overreaching policy against students using firearms during non-school time that is the problem, but the district is also violating students’ First Amendment rights as well.
“In her more than two decades in office, Linda Downing has shirked her duties as a board member to exercise proper oversight of Lacey School District policies and affairs,” Buron said in her notice filed with Ocean County Clerk Scott M. Colabella. “Downing’s lack of oversight, including ending board self-evaluations has significantly contributed to a climate within the district where the First and Second Amendment rights of students are repeatedly violated.”
Buron cited, “Extreme and outrageous punishments given to students who did nothing more than lawfully use firearms as posted on their social media.”
She also said the district forced students to remove bumper stickers and clothing deemed “threatening” by district administration officials.
“Under Downing, the Lacey School administration has engaged in viewpoint discrimination and passed unconstitutionally broad disciplinary policies,” she added.
At one point during the heated debate over the students’ harsh discipline, school board attorney Christopher Supsie called parents in the audience a “Chicken Gallery” for voicing their concerns over their constitutional rights.
