A federal judge ruled Friday that a rural Colorado school can ban a high school student from wearing a Mexican and American flag sash when she graduates this weekend after the student sued the school district.
Justice Nina Wai Wang wrote that wearing a sash during the graduation ceremony falls under a school-sponsored discourse, not a student’s own. Therefore, “the school district is permitted to restrict such speech as it deems fit in the interest of the type of graduation it wishes to hold,” Wang wrote.
The ruling related to the student’s application for a temporary restraining order, which would have allowed her to wear the sash on Saturday for graduation because the case would not have been resolved in time. Wang found that the student and her lawyer had failed to prove that they were likely to succeed, but that the final ruling had not yet been issued.
It is the latest dispute in the United States over what type of cultural graduation dress is allowed at graduation ceremonies, with many focusing on tribal emblems.
Attorneys for Naomi Peña Villasano argued at a hearing Friday in Denver that the school district’s decision violated her rights to free speech. They also said it was inconsistent that the area allowed Native American clothing but not the Peña Villasano scarf that represented her heritage. The sash has the Mexican flag on one side and the United States flag on the other.
“I am 200% — 100% American and 100% Mexican,” she said at a recent school board meeting in rural West Slope, Colorado.
“The county discriminates against the expression of a different cultural heritage,” her attorney, Kenneth Barrino, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at the hearing Friday.
An attorney representing Garfield District School District 16 countered that visits to Native Americans should be allowed in Colorado and categorically differ from wearing state flags. Holly Ortiz said that allowing Pina Villasano to wear the American and Mexican flags as a scarf could open “the door to offensive material”.
Ortiz further stated that the district did not want to prevent Peña Villasano from expressing herself and that an alumna could adorn her hat with flags or wear a sash before or after the ceremony.
“She has no right to express that in any way she wants,” Ortiz said.
Wang stood by the district, finding that “the school district can freely allow one piece and forbid another.”
Similar controversies erupted across the United States this senior season.
a A transgender girl sued against the Mississippi School District for banning her from wearing a dress until graduation. In Oklahoma, a former Native American The student filed a legal claim Against a school district for removing a feather, a sacred religious object, from its hat before the graduation ceremony in 2022.
What qualifies as appropriate graduation dress It was a source of conflict to Native American students across the country. Nevada and Oklahoma on Thursday passed laws allowing Native American students to wear religious and cultural apparel to graduation ceremonies.
This year, Colorado passed a law making it illegal to ban Native American students from wearing such emblems. Almost a dozen states have similar laws.
Legal arguments often come down to whether the First Amendment protects personal expression, in this case the mantle, or whether it would count as school-sponsored speech, and could be limited for educational purposes.
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