In a letter sent to Petaluma High School principal Michael Simpson, the American Civil Liberties Union of Sonoma County strongly criticized the school’s suspension of 50 student protesters and asked that the suspensions be removed from the students’ records calling the suspensions violations of the students’ rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and the California Education Code.

“Our hotline has been inundated by parents and students angry and upset at the school’s action,” noted ACLU of Sonoma County’s co-chair Victor Chechanover. “Petaluma High was the only school in Sonoma County where students were suspended for expressing their political views in a peaceful and non-disruptive fashion on this important issue facing our nation. Many Sonoma County schools did not discipline their students for expressing their political beliefs. Even the other Petaluma high school, Casa Grande did not suspend their students. Most importantly, if the students had missed class without permission for a non-political reason, the school’s policy would have been to give them a detention, not suspension. It is clear that the actions of the principal in suspending these students is unwarranted and an illegal attempt to punish the views being expressed by the students not the action of missing a class without permission.”

The use of suspensions is a violation of the California Education Code, which states that it is “the intent of the Legislature that alternatives to suspensions or expulsion be imposed against any pupil who is truant, tardy, or otherwise absent from school activities”. The law requires that “[s]uspension shall be imposed only when other means of correction fail to bring about proper conduct.”

Chechanover noted, “The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that Students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ The principal’s repeated emphasis on “consequences” as the basis for the suspensions misses the important role of the school to instill in their students the qualities of leadership, awareness of current political issues facing their, and the importance of using their First Amendment right of political expression to attempt to change their government’s policy.”