Vero Beach High School, a public high school on the east coast of Florida, had a First Amendment problem.
The school failed to obey it.
AFTER A RISING SENIOR, J.P. Krause, won his senior class presidency election in a landslide, the Vero Beach school administration punished J.P. for a humorous campaign speech he offered the day before the election. They removed him from the presidency and gave him detention.
The school contended J.P. “harassed” the candidate who came in second by way of J.P.’s 90-second impromptu campaign speech, a speech given in class with his A.P. U.S. History teacher’s permission. Thanks to a student who recorded the speech and shared it with J.P., PLF knew he did no such thing. The video reflected nothing more than good-natured, all-American campaigning for office. With a twinkle in his eye, J.P. promised to build a wall between his school and the nearby rival school—and make the rival school pay for it!
We liked J.P.’s moxie, and thus offered to represent J.P. in a challenge to the school’s actions—in order to reinstate J.P. to the class presidency and remove any disciplinary record.
The world then saw J.P.’s campaign speech via YouTube. After PLF became involved, the video shot around the globe. Within 48 hours of PLF taking the case on, the local NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach covered the story. Then Fox & Friends interviewed J.P. on its national morning show. Next, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and the women of The View spoke about the dispute. The story even made the London Daily Mail, Univision, and the New York Daily News. From all points of the globe, and from left to right, all agreed: this high school’s administrators wronged our client.
Without PLF even setting foot in a courtroom, the public opprobrium forced the school to reinstate J.P. to the class presidency and remove any discipline from his record. We took on the matter and won it within thirteen days.
Thanks to PLF’s enforcement of the Constitution, Vero Beach High School, and the entire world, just received a lesson in free speech. And our client J.P. Krause has quite a story to share for the rest of his life about how he became class president.
