By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, opening its new term yesterday, turned down an appeal by a Kansas boy who was suspended from school for drawing a picture of a Confederate flag in class.
The youth contended the three-day suspension violated his free-speech rights, but school officials said he ran awry of a "racial harassment and intimidation" policy adopted after incidents of racial tension at his school.
"We're greatly disappointed," said a lawyer for the boy, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute in Virginia. "You don't teach democratic values by slamming a hammer down on someone because of free expression."
The justices had no comment in denying the youth's appeal, one of hundreds of cases rejected on the 2000-2001 term's first day.
They have agreed to hear 47 cases so far, including a major challenge to the Clean Air Act and a dispute over whether people can sue states to enforce a federal ban on discrimination against the disabled.
Other cases ask whether police can stop motorists at traffic checkpoints in hopes of catching people who use illegal drugs and whether public hospitals can test pregnant women for drug use and report to police the names of those who test positive. The justices are expected to add about 30 more cases to their agenda in coming months.
Some observers believe the most important day of the court's new term will be election day, Nov. 7. The next president will choose the next members of a court that has divided 5-4 on some of the nation's most difficult issues.
The Confederate flag case began in 1998 when T.J. West, a seventh-grader at Derby Middle School in Derby, Kan., made a 4-by-6-inch sketch of the Confederate battle flag during a math class. West later told an assistant principal a friend urged him to draw the flag, and that he knew what it was but not what it meant.
West also knew drawing the flag violated the school's racial harassment policy adopted in 1995. The policy banned students from possessing "any written material, either printed or in their own handwriting, that is racially divisive or creates ill will or hatred."
Confederate flags were listed as such material.
West and his father challenged the boy's suspension, but a federal trial judge and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the school district.
The appeals court said West had earlier been suspended from school for calling another student "blackie" and was reminded at that time about the harassment and intimidation policy.
School district officials "had reason to believe that a student's display of the Confederate flag might cause disruption and interfere with the rights of other students to be secure and let alone," the appeals court said.
Whitehead said, "I am definitely no fan of the Confederate flag," but he added, "I don't think it's the kind of issue you throw kids out of school for."
The Supreme Court also refused to throw out a $5 billion damage award yesterday that Exxon Mobil Corp. was ordered to pay over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the nation's worst ever.
Lawyers for Exxon Mobil urged the justices to throw out the award on grounds of irregularities during jury deliberations. Company spokesman Tom Cirigliano said Exxon Mobil has other appeals pending, and the high court action does not obligate the company to pay anything now.
The court let actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger, who portrayed endearing barflies "Norm" and "Cliff" in the "Cheers" television comedy, pursue their lawsuit that says two robots stole their act.
Paramount Pictures Corp., which owns the copyright to "Cheers," gave Host International Inc. the right to set up bars in airports using the television show's theme, including robots that Wendt and Ratzenberger said stole their characters. The justices turned down Paramount and Host International's effort to throw out the lawsuit.
The justices also rejected an appeal by an Indiana married couple who say they were sexually harassed at work by the same supervisor. A lower court ruled that the couple cannot sue under a federal law that bans sex discrimination at work. Someone who harasses people of both sexes is not discriminating because of sex, the lower court said.
