BATON ROUGE – Attorney General Jeff Landry has asked to intervene in a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a Jefferson Parish fourth-grader who was targeted for expulsion after briefly handling a BB gun during a virtual class.
Landry filed the motion to intervene earlier this month in a lawsuit being considered in the Eastern District of Louisiana, arguing that Jefferson Parish Public Schools had improperly applied state student discipline statutes in the case of Ka’Mauri Harrison.
Harrison was seen on camera during online instruction last year moving a toy BB gun that his younger brother had unintentionally knocked over. A teacher initially described the gun as a rifle, and Ka’Mauri was eventually suspended for six days over the incident.
New Orleans attorney Chelsea Brener Cusimano
Chelsea Brener Cusimano, the New Orleans attorney representing the Harrison family, said Landry’s intervention would help to raise the profile of the case statewide.
“If it were to be awarded, it would be very helpful,” Brener Cusimano told the Louisiana Record. “It wouldn’t just be about Ka’Mauri and his damages … It would be about potential damages and harm to the children probably in the entire state of Louisiana, not just Jefferson Parish.”
She is also representing the family of a Jefferson Parish sixth-grader, Tomie Brown, who faced a similar punishment for showing a BB gun during a virtual class.
“The goal of the lawsuit is to wipe these children’s records clean,” Brener Cusimano said. “As it stands, these kids have weapons-on-campus possessions written on their disciplinary jackets. … It just looks like Ka-Mauri brought a gun to school.”
Landry’s motion to intervene contends that the school district violated the families’ rights to privacy in their homes. And the state legislature agreed that the school board exceeded its authority in applying disciplinary statutes to actions taking place in students’ homes during COVID-19 virtual instruction.
“The legislature even unanimously passed a law expressly reaffirming that the home is not school property, and discipline policies cannot treat it the same,” Landry said in a prepared statement. “The board’s dogged insistence upon continuing to do so is not only senseless and wrong, but it is also a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
In a separate lawsuit filed in state court, Landry also contends that the school district violated the state’s open-meeting law when it limited public participation in committee sessions that helped the district draw up a new online instruction policy.