Child Charged With Disorderly Conduct for Misbehavior at School

[PandorasBox]

The thing is....you are not a lawyer. You may create more damage than reducing it, which that $2K lawyer would do.

Let's put it this way....your child needs an appendectomy. Would you do it yourself? Of course not.....

[Disagreeable]

Talk to a few other lawyers. You might find one who has children, time and social conscious.

[itisup2us]

As I stated previously, it requires the utterance to be both vulgar, obscene, profane, or indecent and that it by speaking it, it tended to incite an immediate breach of peace.

What about the 1st Amendment precept of Freedom of Speech, so it takes an act of Congress, no pun intended, by Constitutionally established requirements for the People to place restraints on Government and Government can simply "interpret" the rights and protections of the people away without going to the same Constitutional process of altering them. This is not to say that the School system cannot impose its own standard of conduct for students, faculty and visitors to observe while on School property, but offensive language is a reason to be asked to leave the property but not subject someone to criminal prosecution for a word misspoken.

[jk]

the 1st does not give an absolute right to spiel off anything without limit. The courts have consistently upheld the use of "fighting words" as not being protected speech. I believe that is the basis of the statute but of course, there was no incitement involved so I do not see it as being a valid charge in this case.

[twobit]

Thanks everyone for all the insight. I have so much more info to help my 14 year old with her defense. I will let you know what happens....the next few days should be interesting!

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*Update* Good news!
We had a friend who was a lawyer call the prosecutor and convinced him to drop the case. Principal of the school just had to say that the offense should have been handled in the school rather than through the court system. I will say that Texas senators are looking at ways to pass laws against this. This organization was helpful. www.texasappleseed.net

Thanks for everyone's help!