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Jackson Walker Secures Landmark Win for Client in First Amendment Lawsuit

Jackson Walker attorneys James Carlos McFall, Edwin Buffmire, Eric Wong, and Maggie I. Burreson obtained the largest known recovery in a student speech case in United States history.

The Firm’s client, Nathaniel Yu, the former student body president of a California Bay Area public high school, was punished for a short video on YouTube parodying a James Bond film to promote his election campaign.

The defendant school district and a number of district employees stripped Nathaniel of his class presidency, among other formal punishment, for over three months. Later, district employees spread misinformation about the video that led to Nathaniel and his family receiving death threats.

In spring 2019, the Jackson Walker team took over the case and secured critical evidence establishing that the school officials censored the parody because they disapproved of its content.

Read the full article on JW NEWS.

 

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School district reaches $665K settlement with student over Bond parody

San Ramon Valley High alum Nathaniel Yu speaks out about his campaign video that had been blasted by @SRVUSD1 & some students as culturally insensitive. Now, the district is paying him $665K & apologizing to him to settle his federal lawsuit.

The San Ramon Valley Unified School District has reached a $665,000 settlement with a former student body president who was disciplined for participating in a James Bond parody video on the eve of a school election, the students’ lawyers announced today.

Nathaniel Yu, now 20, and the district reached the settlement in February. On Tuesday, the two sides filed a joint request asking U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney of San Francisco to dismiss the civil rights lawsuit Yu filed in 2017.

The settlement also provides that the district will post an apology on its website by April 14.

Yu was 17 and a junior at San Ramon Valley High School in Danville when he ran for the office of Associated Student Body president. Three days before the election began, he and four friends created a parody video that featured Yu as a James Bond-type hero who rescues a person from being forced by members of an extremist group to participate in a video game competition.

Read the full article on KTVU Fox2

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California School District Settles Legal Case With Former High School Student Body President

Expert: Nathaniel Yu ‘most successful student speech plaintiff in U.S. history’

DANVILLE, Calif. – The San Ramon Valley Unified School District has settled a case involving First Amendment and Due Process claims brought by former student body president Nathaniel Yu. As part of the agreement, the district will pay $665,000 and apologize for “negative effects, disruption, and emotional distress” suffered by Mr. Yu and his family.

First Amendment scholar and former Student Press Law Center Executive Director, Frank LoMonte, has followed this case closely and describes it as “the largest settlement amount surrounding student free speech cases,” adding, “it makes Nathaniel the most successful student speech plaintiff in U.S. history.”

“The landmark settlement figure sends a strong message to public school officials throughout the country that the First Amendment prohibits them from censoring off-campus student speech that does not substantially disrupt school activities,” Prof. LoMonte said. “This is especially true in instances such as this where the speech was made on a weekend, entirely off-campus, and with no school resources.”

According to the lawsuit, the school district violated Mr. Yu’s First Amendment rights when it disciplined him for his role in creating a James Bond-style parody video. As punishment, Mr. Yu, who was 17 and a junior at San Ramon Valley High School at the time, was stripped of his position as elected junior class president, removed from the school’s leadership class and disqualified from the Associated Student Body presidential election after he had already garnered the majority of votes.

Even after the school district reversed their punishment, district employees retaliated against, and continued to publicly disparage Mr. Yu.

In November 2019, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ruled against the school district’s motion to dismiss the case, rejecting an argument that the parody constituted school-sponsored speech. A month later, the school district and its legal team were ordered by the court to release more than 12,000 documents they previously withheld. Soon thereafter, the district proposed to settle.

Lead attorney James Carlos McFall, a Dallas partner at Jackson Walker LLP stated, “It was an honor and a privilege to represent Nathaniel and his family in this important First Amendment lawsuit. The defendants punished him for the parody video because they found it ‘offensive’ and ‘inappropriate.’ The First Amendment, however, prohibits government officials from punishing speakers for speech simply because they subjectively disapprove of its content.”

Nathaniel Yu said the settlement and the district’s apology underscore the importance of our Constitution and the First Amendment in the modern age of digital technology and social media.  

“No one should be subjected to what my family and I have been forced to endure. As a child of immigrants, I am constantly reminded that we cannot take our civil rights for granted. We must continue our fight to preserve these rights at all costs.”

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Danville student settles free-speech lawsuit against SRVUSD, will receive $665,000 and public apology

Case stemmed from discipline for ASB president-elect over controversial ‘parody video’ in 2017

The San Ramon Valley Unified School District has settled a free-speech lawsuit involving a former student who was disciplined for his part in the creation of a video that at the time had been described as Islamophobic.

 

As a part of the settlement, the district will award former San Ramon Valley High School student body president Nathaniel Yu $665,000 and will apologize for “negative effects, disruption and emotional distress” suffered by Yu and his family resulting from discipline inflicted on him from the district.

 

“The landmark settlement figure sends a strong message to public school officials throughout the country that the First Amendment prohibits them from censoring off-campus student speech that does not substantially disrupt school activities,” Frank LoMonte, First Amendment scholar and former Student Press Law Center executive director, said in a statement on Tuesday. “This is especially true in instances such as this where the speech was made on a weekend, entirely off-campus, and with no school resources.”

 

According to the lawsuit, the school district violated Yu’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment when it disciplined him for his role in creating what Yu’s representatives called “a James Bond-style parody video,” back in February 2017, during his campaign for student body president.

 

Read the full article on Pleasanton Weekly