California parents tell 'Fox & Friends' they are suing school for suspending son for wearing 'blackface'
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: The January 17 episode of 'Fox & Friends' had J.A., an eighth-grade student from Muirlands Middle School in California, join co-host Ainsley Earhardt, along with his father Daniel Ameduri, and their lawyer Karin Sweigart, to talk about his suspension from school for allegedly wearing 'blackface' at a football game.
The incident that took place on October 13, 2023, has resulted in a lawsuit against school officials who handed J.A. a two-day suspension and a ban from attending district sporting events.
What did J.A. do to earn a suspension?
The teenager had put on black eye paint, emulating professional football players, while attending a high school football game between La Jolla High School and Morse High School.
"It was a normal day, everything was normal. No one said anything. It was a normal football game and La Jolla won," J.A. said, adding, "I used to go to a lot of football games when I lived in Texas, and I used to play football and sometimes we put that on if one of the kids brought it."
"Wasn’t there a security guard there? He’s a Black security guard, and he came up to you and complimented you on it?" asked Earhardt, to which he replied, "I asked him (guard), ‘How did it look?’ and he said, ‘The spikes need to go higher.’"
Ameduri exclaimed that he was shocked to hear the accusations against his son, since there were no incidents at the game involving J.A., and none had complained.
"Then the following Monday, Tuesday, nothing," continued Ameduri. "Wednesday afternoon the principal called J.A. into the office, and the next morning my wife and I showed up and he said, ‘He did blackface,’ and he was suspended for two days and was gonna be banned from sports."
Even when Ameduri showed a picture of the student from the game to the school principal, hoping to end the controversy, it did not resolve the situation.
"Anyone that has ever been to a sports game knows that this is very normal and these are kids that were playing hide and seek a few days prior at my house… half of the group are minorities, some of them African American, it’s just ridiculous that this would be a racial incident," he added.
The lawsuit brought against Muirlands Middle School
Lawyer Karin Sweigart, who is representing the teenager's family, told Earhardt, "We’re suing the principal directly, the superintendent, and then the people who made the decision to rubber stamp the principal’s ridiculous decision to suspend J.A."
"There was a recent case just in the last couple of years at the Supreme Court where they talked about the out-of-school speech rights that students have to be able to express themselves. It was very clear that unless you have a substantial disruption on the campus, schools cannot restrict the out-of-school speech rights of students," she continued.
"Here the school is just going way beyond the constitutional strictures that they have to be able to regulate student speech," she said, claiming that the school further failed to provide due process.
Ameduri added, "The only people showing absolute racism right now is the school and the school administrators. There wasn’t even a real investigation."
