When a six-year-old draws a picture with the words “Black Lives Mater,” [sic] all is well in the world. When she adds “any life” below those words, she is criminalized. This makes sense, right?

For reference, here’s the picture she drew:

Credit: Pacific Legal Foundation

An elementary student at Capistrano Unified School District in Southern California, “B.B,” had just learned about Martin Luther King Jr. in class when she decided to draw a picture showing different racial backgrounds, and label it with the phrases above. She then gave it to her black classmate, whose mother saw it when she arrived home and called the school concerned that their daughter was being targeted.

According to the Pacific Legal Foundation, “The principal confronted B.B. and explained that including the phrase ‘any life’ in the drawing was ‘inappropriate’ and ‘racist,’ and he forced B.B. to apologize to her classmate. B.B. would also no longer be allowed to draw pictures in school. Worse still, the [now] 7-year-old was not allowed to go to recess for two weeks. Instead, she had to sit and watch her friends play without her.”

What started as an “innocent effort to be nice to her friend,” turned into an unlawful punishment in which a child’s First Amendment rights are in jeopardy. Not only was coloring criminalized, but a child was also traumatized because she was criminalized by her school for giving a gift to a friend.

As a result of the incident, B.B.’s mother – who was told about the incident over a year later – filed a lawsuit against the school district with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California then ruled that the public school had a right to punish B.B.

But the Pacific Legal Foundation brought an appeal on July 15 on behalf of B.B.’s mother.

The Free Speech Center states the reality: “This matter should have been resolved long ago with an apology by the school district. That didn’t happen so litigation was filed.”

Pacific Legal Attorney Caleb Trotter explained on the Daily Signal podcast, “You can see in their just gross overreaction to the innocent, inclusive use of ‘any life’ that they were teaching this through only one viewpoint, which is the progressive-accepted racial ideology viewpoint, and that’s deeply troubling.”

Schools, specifically in California, frequently undermine parental rights, but they also conveniently hide information from parents when their child’s rights are being taken away.

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Image from Shutterstock.