Teen sued after being suspended for 'playful' Instagram memes about school principal

A 17-year-old Tennessee high school student is suing his school district and administrators after he was suspended for creating satirical memes on social media and posting them to his principal.

According to the federal lawsuit filed July 19, the unnamed student, who is set to begin his senior year at Tullahoma High School, accuses the Tullahoma City School District, current principal Jason Quick and assistant principal Derrick Crutchfield of violating his First Amendment rights have the right to freedom of expression after he was suspended for three days for posting the memes on Instagram.

Attorneys representing the school district and the administration did not immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment.

“This case involves a thin-skinned principal who defied the First Amendment and suspended a student for mocking the principal on his Instagram page, even though the posts did not cause a disruption in the school,” the attorneys said student in their complaint.

Tullahoma High School in Tennessee.

According to the lawsuit, in 2022, off campus and during summer vacation, the student posted three memes featuring Quick on his personal Instagram account.

The satirical memes included an image of Quick holding a box of vegetables with the text “Like a sister but not a sister <33," an altered image of Quick in a dress with cat ears and whiskers, and one with his face placed on a video game character , which is held by a cartoon bird.

“The student intended the images to make a tongue-in-cheek comment that gently angered a school administrator he found humorless,” Conor Fitzpatrick, the lead attorney representing the student, said in a statement.

The memes led to a suspension, according to the student's lawyers.

On August 10, 2022, immediately after Crutchfield informed the student that he would be suspended for five days, the student suffered a panic attack and suffered sweats, shortness of breath and numbness in both arms, the complaint states.

The suspension was later reduced to three days after Crutchfield allegedly told the student that he had “reviewed” the social media post and felt it was a more appropriate punishment.

In the statement, Fitzpatrick and other attorneys working at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech advocacy group, said school administrators should not use vague social media policies to encourage off-campus actions punish.

“Principal Quick suspended a student for joking memes — but he can’t suspend the First Amendment,” FIRE attorney Harrison Rosenthal said in the statement.

“As long as a student’s posts do not significantly disrupt school, what youth post on social media in their free time is between them and their parents and not the government,” Fitzpatrick added.

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