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Well, that was awkward: 'I ♥ Boobies' appeal heard at federal court in Philly
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Well, that was awkward: 'I ♥ Boobies' appeal heard at federal court in Philly
A couple of Easton Area School District (EASD) middle school students, Kayla Martinez and Brianna Hawk, made national news in 2010 when their school banned breast-cancer-awareness bracelets bearing the phrase “I ♥ Boobies! (Keep A Breast),” sold for $4 each by the Keep A Breast Foundation. Today, their case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, after Judge Mary McLaughlin of the federal district court issued an injunction against the ban.
American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania represented the girls, seeking an emergency injunction and an end to the girls' punishment, which includes barring them from extracurriculars.
Mary Catherine Roper of the ACLU told the court that the students' freedom of speech had been violated, and that the school district appeared to be manufacturing a sexual meaning to rationalize its ban on something with which administrators were uncomfortable. John Freund, attorney for the school district, said the issue was not "viewpoint discrimination" but rather "a dress-code violation." He said schools need to be able to preserve "the civility of discourse in the classroom," and that a ruling against the district opens the school to a flood of "cause-based marketing laced with sexual double entendres."
This, in turn, led to a frank discussion of "boobies," of the likes not often seen in a courthouse.
Whether "I ♥ Boobies!" is even a double entendre was a matter of some discussion. One judge queried Freund, "Where is the double entendre? Boobies are breasts." He added that the students appeared to be "trying to get us to the point of intelligent discourse" on the importance of breast self-exams. And given that the school was in fact marking breast-cancer awareness day, another judge added, "If breasts are not a problem, what makes boobies a big problem?"
Freund indicated that there might be a slippery slope attached to allowing such messaging. "This case is simply trying to avoid throwing a match into a cauldron of boiling hormones."
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