ACLU Helps Threatening Teen Songwriter Beat the Rap, for Now
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
August 31, 2005
(AgapePress) - A constitutional attorney says despite a recent court ruling to the contrary, a Pennsylvania school district was justified in expelling a 14-year-old student for writing violent, profane rap lyrics and posting them on the Internet.U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose recently ordered the Riverside Beaver County School District to re-admit 14-year-old rap enthusiast Anthony Latour, who was removed from class last April by North Sewickley Township police and charged with making terroristic threats and harassment after he named a fellow student in a rap called "Massacre." The arrested student "rapper" was expelled May 5.
American Civil Liberties Union attorneys sued the school district for kicking the teenager out of school, arguing that his songs are constitutionally protected speech. The director of the ACLU's Greater Pittsburgh chapter also noted that Latour recorded his songs at home and never brought them to school. The ACLU asked for an injunction to reinstate the youth to the Riverside Beaver County district so he could start high school with his classmates on August 31.
According to one Associated Press report, the ACLU argued that the allegedly threatening lyrics the 14-year old wrote were nothing more than "battle rap." This modern music genre, recently popularized by rap artist-songwriter Eminem in the movie Eight Mile, involves rapper combatants who try to out-rhyme each other, sometimes using stylized insults and violent verbal putdowns.
The AP story quotes one of Latour's songs as warning, "So watch what you say about me, I'm everywhere son / And the word of mouth is that I'm carrying guns / Now that I'm comin' for you -- what the (expletive) you gonna do / I come double with the pump tons of slugs that will punish you."
Law enforcement officials apparently found sufficient cause in the lyrics to arrest and charge Latour. According to police, the teen songwriter and self-styled "battle rapper" threatened to shoot up his school and named a potential victim. However, Judge Ambrose ruled that Latour's rap lyrics did not amount to "true threats" against the school and were indeed protected by the First Amendment, and she ordered his reinstatement in school.
A Fine Line Between Freedom and Safety
Attorney Stephen Crampton, a constitutional law expert and chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says although public schools must give wide latitude to individuals' free-speech rights, school officials are duty bound to investigate all violent threats made by students. "Rap lyrics may be popular avenues to throw threats around that don't sound very serious," he says, "but imagine the fallout had the school not taken this seriously and this kid come through and actually shot somebody or something."
One can easily envisage the finger-pointing that would have gone on had Latour actually proceeded to act on the threats implied in his rap lyrics," Crampton adds. "So the school's really between the rock and the hard place," he says.
The AFA Law Center spokesman points out that school administrators have to walk a fine line between protecting students' First Amendment rights and ensuring their safety. "The crucial element, when you're looking at the possibility of a threat," he notes, "is [that] you have to distinguish between just kind of broad, open-ended statements and genuine threats of imminent harm."
According to Crampton, the real issue in a case like that of Anthony Latour and his allegedly threatening rap lyrics is that the situation required a judgment call on the part of school officials. "The touchstone of the inquiry is," the attorney explains, "is there a statement here that suggests he's going to take action in the near future?"
Latour still faces a court hearing on criminal charges. He was arrested April 21 and charged in juvenile court with harassment and making terroristic threats after school officials alerted authorities to his lyrics.
