Supreme Court declines appeal from White Texan claiming racial harassment at school
WASHINGTON – A White Texan says he was targeted by classmates and teachers at his predominantly Hispanic school district because of his race, including being called 'Whitey' by a math aide and being asked by a principal if he was listening to Dixie music.
In middle school band class in 2018, two students brought up 'the evils of the white race in American history,' Brooks Warden said in his years-long lawsuit.
The Supreme Court on June 30 declined to decide if Warden can sue for racial harassment under the Civil Rights Act.
More: Supreme Court sides with straight woman in 'reverse discrimination' case
The Austin Independent School District said Warden failed to show the alleged hostility was based on race, rather than his political views.
'This case has devolved into a publicity stunt fueled by partisan rhetoric and political opportunism,' lawyers for the school district told the Supreme Court. 'Austin ISD does not condone harassment or bullying of any kind, and it regrets that Brooks had negative experiences with its students and staff members, but this is not a Title VI case.'
A federal judge dismissed the complaint. But the Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals evenly divided over the issue.
One of the appeals judges who sided with Warden said the culture increasingly accepts – it not celebrates – racism against White people.
'Racism is now edgy and exciting—so long as it's against whites,' Circuit Judge James Ho wrote.
Warden said the bullying began after he wore a MAGA hat on a middle school field trip in 2017. His lawyers said he should not have to prove that race was the main reason he was targeted instead of just one of the reasons.
The school district said Warden never complained that he was mistreated because of his race while he was a student there. That allegation came nearly a year after he sued and after a local judge had dismissed his multiple amended complaints against the school, lawyers for the district said.
The court, the lawyers said, should not 'open the proverbial floodgates to civil liability by allowing students to sue their schools for race-based harassment every time they hear a political viewpoint about race that they do not share.'
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'Because one way of making new law on the emergency docket (the deprecation of Humphrey's) turns out to require yet another (the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception). If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler—and more judicial—approach would have been to deny the President's application for a stay on the continued authority of Humphrey's.' All of this represents a fundamental shift in how the Supreme Court operates. The court could have allowed the CPSC and NLRB officials to stay in office to preserve the status quo during litigation, heard their cases on an accelerated briefing schedule, and overturned Humphrey's Executor while ruling against them on the merits. The court's critics could have disagreed with the court's ultimate reasoning, but they could have found no fault in how it operated to get there. Instead, the conservative justices simply did what they wanted to do because they could. What a dizzying sensation that will be for any American raised in our civic faith. Covering the court for the last six months feels less like covering a court of law steeped in the Anglo-American legal tradition and more like covering the Soviet Union's politburo or Iran's Guardian Council from afar. The Supreme Court's most impactful work this year has not been to decide actual cases and controversies on the merits, or to fairly balance the equities on shadow-docket questions, but to enforce a certain ideological vision upon the American constitutional order as quickly, as bluntly, and as hackishly as it can. I do not write lightly that the central theme coming from the Supreme Court as of late is that Trump's own vision for the country supersedes the laws that Congress has actually written—to provide for-cause removal protections, to create a Department of Education, to provide anti-torture protections for prospective deportees, and so on. As Humphrey's Executor's fate shows, that vision might even outrank the decisions of the high court itself when the justices agree with it. That raises an unsettling question: If the justices don't respect their own precedents or procedures, why should anyone else?
