Family sues school district after student suspended for school shooting ‘joke’

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD/Gray News) - The family of an Arizona high school student is suing a school district, claiming their son was unfairly suspended after typing a threat in an email that he never sent.

The family of a Marana Unified School District student claims it violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

“I have been blessed with an amazing teenager, and this is not something that I ever in my life would have thought I would be dealing with,” Karalee Merrill, the boy’s mother, said.

According to Merrill, in October 2024, her son was drafting an email to a teacher at her home about a grade when he started typing out jokes.

“He always starts out typing some just ridiculous things. I think it’s his process. I don’t know if it helps him get serious,” she said.

The jokes read “Mister Mister I want to date your sister,” and “Skibbidi toilet my grade is in the toilet”.

But the last joke is what caught the attention of the school district as it read “GANG GANG GIMME A BETTER GRADE OR I SHOOT UP DA SKOOL HOMIE.”

The threat was flagged by a monitoring software used by the school districts called Gaggle.

According to the terms section of the district’s Chromebook device loan agreement, “School administration can review all files, data, messages, and email at any time with or without notice.”

But the extent of what is reviewed is something that Merrill says she didn’t realize.

“I had no idea that down to the keystroke, which was on the computer for a few seconds and deleted, that it could be seen,” she said.

Merrill said the typed-out threat, which she emphasizes was a joke, was only in the email draft for five seconds before she suggested to her son to delete it.

“I was like, ‘(You) better delete it, because what if you accidentally send it?’ He was like, ‘Ohh,’ and then he hit delete and closed the Chromebook,” the mother said.

It resulted in the student being suspended for 11 days initially, pending a long-term suspension review.

Merrill says she worries that the suspension could have long-term impacts on her son.

“I don’t know how it will affect him as he’s applying for colleges and other things,” Merrill said, “He kind of just lost trust in the school that was there to help him.”

Lawyers representing the family argue his speech was First Amendment-protected.

“The right to free speech and expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution includes the right of students to speak without interference by their school when they are at home, so long as the speech does not bear a sufficient nexus to the school,” an interim complaint filed against the school district stated.

Aaron Baumann, who is an assistant teaching professor with Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, is representing the Merrill family in the lawsuit.

He said that because the speech is First Amendment-protected, there was no crime to fit the punishment dished out by the school district.

“The law is clear that students, even when they’re students of a public school, have a right to speak at home, when they’re off campus,” Baumann said.

MUSD’s contract Chromebook Parent and Student Contract states, “Safety features are available on the student’s device 24 hours per day, seven days a week, no matter the location of the child’s Chromebook.”

It is unclear if Gaggle is considered one of those safety features, but Baumann argues the First Amendment protects speech at home, and while it doesn’t protect threats, he says the context of this incident shows there was no credible threat to the school.

“The line is drawn that a student’s speech off campus can only be disciplined if that speech pertains to a credible threat to the school,” he said. “She [Merrill] told the principal, I was there with my son. We were joking together. He was at home. He’s still at home, and yet the principal didn’t take any of that into consideration.”

School district officials declined to comment on the situation, citing the pending litigation, but a local attorney with experience working cases in free speech gave his thoughts on what defense might be used by the school district.

“The strong argument is just that it’s the knowledge they were aware of it,” Michael Harnden, senior associate at Farhang and Medcoff, said. “Victims of a potential crime could say, ‘You knew he typed this and then it happened, why didn’t you do something?’”

According to Baumann, this is a case that could serve as a new benchmark for the reach schools have on restricting speech.

“If schools can discipline students for anything they type on a device when they’re at home ... an incredible amount of their speech, whether they’re on campus or off, is now all of a sudden subject to school regulation,” he said.

Baumann is also arguing that the district’s superintendent lowered the student’s suspension to nine days, even though the boy had already served 11, which prevented the family from appealing to the last level of appeals, the school board.