ACLU’s “Kick-A-Jew Day” Case Edges Forward

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In a 2005 South Park episode, Eric Cartman—the show’s fat, whiny, spoiled antihero—sets off an anti-redhead movement in his Colorado elementary school. “Gingers,” he says, are soulless, inferior beings that should be shunned. The episode’s satiric take on bigotry was lost on some: in 2008, it inspired a 14-year-old British Columbia boy to launch a Facebook group declaring November 20, 2008, “Kick-a-Ginger Day,” and sparking redhead bullying nationwide. A year later, ten North Maple Middle School students in Collier County, Florida, revised the holiday—they held “Kick-a-Jew Day” in its stead. At least one student was kicked and reported the attack to school authorities.

The incident has since sparked a lawsuit against the Collier County school district by the local chapter of the ACLU, which wants the district to reveal how it disciplined the students involved in the incident. Last week, that effort finally got a go-ahead…. with caveats. Collier County Judge Hugh Hayes denied the school district’s motion to dismiss the suit, but also asked both sides to do a little rethinking and rewriting.

The Backstory: Six days after “Kick-a-Jew Day” in 2009, Collier County’s ACLU chapter requested records from the school district describing details of the incident. They never got them. So nearly two years later the group filed a lawsuit, alleging that the school failed to comply with the ACLU’s repeated document requests—and that, under the state’s Public Records Act, it should have to.

The School Board disagrees. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools can’t release “personally identifiable information in student education records” without written consent from the student or parent. That’s why, though the school did provide some documents to the ACLU initially, they didn’t turn over any that actually described “Kick-a-Jew Day,” or what was done to discipline the kids involved.

The district isn’t budging, even though the ACLU asked, twice, to simply receive the disciplinary records with all identifying information redacted. “We are not interested in who the students are,” Douglas Wilson—president of Collier County’s ACLU—told The Naples News. “We are interested in how the district handled this incident.”

The judge’s ruling last Wednesday was a step forward—but the extra work he’s requested is substantial; Collier County has to file a new motion asking for a more definitive document request from the ACLU, and the organization will then have 30 days to churn one out. The requested edits could draw out the case even further.

Even so, this is a judicial step worth noting. “Kick-a-Jew Day” might look like just a naïve response to popular media. But as cultural memes grow pricklier, and kids hear about them at younger ages, there could certainly be more such unfortunate misunderstandings—even in the most open-minded of environments. It’s good that this court is taking this case seriously. If we have a bunch of Jew- and “ginger”-kicking incidents in our future, we should have a public discussion—in court, if necessary—about how to punish the perpetrators and protect the victims.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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