Student Suspended for Using “Illegal Alien” in Class and Sues School District

(OutKick) – Merriam-Webster still has no problem defining the word “aliens,” and a vilified North Carolina teenager trusts a judge won’t either.

Lawyers for Christian McGhee sued the Davidson County School District on Tuesday after the boy was suspended and faced accusations of racism for asking a question about the word “aliens” in English class.

Specifically, the 16-year-old student was punished last month after he raised his hand during a vocabulary lesson and asked his English teacher whether a reference to the word “aliens” referred to “space aliens or illegal aliens who need green cards.” says the lawsuit filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of the McGhee family.

(Leah McGhee, whose son was suspended from school for using “illegal aliens” in English class, addresses the Davidson County School Board during Monday night’s meeting. She called for the removal of two “corrupt” school board members. Courtesy of Brianna Kraemer, The Carolina Journal)

After the question was asked, a Hispanic male student in the class joked that he would kick Christian’s ass before class “otherwise proceeded as usual,” the filing says.

Not “angry” or “offended”

After class, Christian and the other student were taken to the office of an assistant principal, who questioned the two students and then claimed that the other student was offended by Christian’s question. The Hispanic student said he was neither “upset” nor “offended,” according to the lawsuit.

The school ultimately suspended McGhee “even though there was no significant disruption to class,” his lawyers argue, while noting that school administrators equated McGhee’s question “to a vicious racial slur.”

The lawyers further claim that McGhee returned to the classroom after being “branded a racist by his school” and was subjected to “exclusion, bullying and threats” because of his question in English class. His parents ultimately decided to end the school year by homeschooling the boy.

Dean McGee, an educational freedom advocate at the Liberty Justice Center, sees this as a fight over the First Amendment and due process.

“The school has independently classified this as a racist incident. There is nothing to suggest this. It was a completely neutral legal formulation. Everyone from Supreme Court justices to academics to actual U.S. law, and the judges in the district where we are filing the lawsuit, use the term “aliens,” “illegal aliens, green cards.” Those are common terms,” McGee told OutKick.

“The school’s stance appears to be that this was offensive, even though no one in the class actually found it offensive.”

No opportunity to appeal

Unable to appeal his suspension, the high school sophomore was forced to miss a major track and field event.

Lawyers believe their client was not given the opportunity to defend himself, which they see as worrying as it could impact other students and their ability to speak in class. They claim that vague speech guidelines like Christian McGhee’s are bad news.

“Our client wasn’t trying to take a political stand, he wasn’t trying to provoke,” McGee said. “If the school’s decision stands, every child in every school could be afraid to ask just one question in class, like our client did.”

The lawsuit against the Davidson County School District asks that the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina clear Christian McGhee’s name and award damages at trial.

“I raised our son to reject racism in all its forms, but it is the school, not the Christian school, that introduced race into this incident,” Leah McGhee, the boy’s mother, said in a news release who announced the lawsuit. “It seems this government would rather destroy its own reputation and that of my son than admit it made a mistake.”

On Monday night at the Davidson County School Board meeting, Leah called for the removal of two board members for being “corrupt.”

As a reminder, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has not yet removed the term “illegal alien” from the dictionary. It is still defined as “a foreign person living in a country without having an official residence permit to do so.”

Soon we will find out whether a court is willing to abide by this definition and recognize a boy’s right to use these words in English class.