FIRST TAKE Stand Your Ground? WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY D
o state self-defense laws, similar to the one at play in the recent Trayvon Mar- tin-George Zimmerman case, apply to students being bullied on the school bus? What about school bus drivers or other staff on route? What are the training and liability implications?
Tose are just a few questions that can be raised following a July court decision in Florida
on a fight between a boy and a girl on a school bus that could set an alarming — and con- fusing — precedence. Sixteen states, including infamous Florida, have a version of “Stand Your Ground,” and another nine states have self-defense laws that apply only to a person’s home or real property. But all states and school districts will want to pay attention to the ruling issued by Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeals regarding the battery conviction of the boy, a middle-school student, said Peggy A. Burns, Esq., STN’s legal contributor, owner of Educa- tion Compliance Group and editor of Legal Routes. Te boy, named in reports as T.P., was charged for his role in the fight on the school bus with a larger girl, A.F. During a preliminary hearing, T.P. claimed self-defense under Stand Your Ground because he said A.F. started the fight by grabbing his jacket and fighting him down to the bus seat, which the school bus driver corroborated under oath. A.F., meanwhile, gave two different accounts of how the fight started. But the Broward County Circuit Court denied T.P.’s motion and, again, denied T.P.’s motion at trial, where the bus driver did not testify. As a result, T.P. was found guilty. Te court of appeals ruled that the circuit court erred by “believing that the Stand Your
Ground law applied only to the defense of home or vehicle, not on a bus.” Te conviction was reversed and the case remanded because T.P. indeed “had the right to assert a defense” under the Stand Your Ground law as he was not engaged in unlawful activity, “and he had the right to be on the bus going home from school… “Although the trial court’s misgivings of applying it to a fight on a school bus may be well
taken, it is not the place of the trial court, or this court, to refuse to apply the plain meaning of the statute.” Te appeals court, however, rejected T.P.’s contention at trial that mere battery of any sort
invokes the Stand Your Ground law. It further ruled that that battery may not always be a matter of force, such as with unwanted touching, that reasonably could result in imminent threat of serious bodily, as Florida’s Stand Your Ground law requires. Still, Burns said school bus drivers very well might see students being bullied invoke
Stand Your Ground laws, even in states that don’t have them, to justify fighting back with or without the presence of the reasonable threat of serious bodily harm, an element that is further muddied when applied to a student with a cognitive disability, for example. Additionally, Burns said when and if school bus drivers should get involved in stopping
physical altercations on the bus, or how to respond if they are attacked, adds to the confusion. While many school districts have policies that allow a student to use self-defense, she
added that clearer policies might be needed from state boards of education level or opinions from the state’s attorney general. Te latter occurred on Aug. 1 in an unrelated case of arming school staff in Arkansas to respond to active shooters. Te state’s Attorney General Dustin McDaniel issued an opinion that prohibits school districts from employing teachers or other school staff as armed security guards. “Te way parents might train their kids (to use Stand Your Ground) could be amazing,”
Burns concluded. How would you respond?
10 School Transportation News October 2013
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